TUTORING
GCSE and A-level Economics tutor
Hi! I’m Eddie
I’m a Geography Student at a Top 10 UK University. At A-Level, I studied Geography, Economics, and Biology. I also undertook an EPQ, in which I achieved an A*. I’m a Geography tutor working with GCSE and A-level students across CIE, AQA, Edexcel, and OCR.
GCSE and A-level Economics tutor – Loughborough, London & online
I’m Eddie, a GCSE and A-level Economics tutor, and here’s a scenario I see constantly. A student revises properly. They can define price elasticity, they can list the causes of inflation – they know their market failures cold. Then they hand in a 25-marker, having written everything they know, and get a 12.
The knowledge is all there. The marks aren’t. And that’s such a frustrating place to be, because the obvious response – revise harder – is the one thing that won’t fix it.
Why does my child know the content but still lose marks in Economics?
Because Economics doesn’t mainly reward knowing things. It rewards judging things.
Every board splits its marks across four assessment objectives – knowledge, application, analysis and evaluation (AQA sets them out here). Knowledge is only the first one. Depending on the board, analysis and evaluation together carry somewhere between half and two thirds of the marks at A-level. On OCR’s H460, all four are weighted 25% each, so analysis and evaluation are worth exactly half the paper between them.
So a student who writes down everything they know has, quite literally, gone after a quarter of the marks. Very thoroughly. And they’ll usually tell you the exam was fine.
What actually earns the top band is different, and it’s teachable:
Chains of reasoning that don’t stop early. “A subsidy lowers costs, so supply increases” is one link. The examiner wants the whole chain – supply shifts right, price falls, quantity demanded extends, consumer surplus rises, and here’s the effect on the specific market in the extract. Most students stop two links short, every single time.
Judgements that are justified, but not properly asserted. “In conclusion, the policy is effective” earns nothing. “It depends on the price elasticity of demand – if demand is inelastic, the quantity effect is small and the policy mostly raises revenue rather than changing behaviour” earns a lot. Evaluation isn’t a paragraph you bolt on at the end. It’s a habit of asking what does this depend on?
Diagrams that are actually used. Correct axes, labelled curves, shift arrows, the new equilibrium marked – and then referred to in the writing. A perfect diagram that the essay never mentions is decoration, not analysis. These are some of the cheapest marks on the paper and they get dropped constantly.
None of that is content. It’s technique. Which is why a student can know more Economics than half their class and still sit in the middle of it.
I’m not speaking from the outside here, either. After a macro mock in Year 13 I sat down and wrote myself a reflection, and the first line of it was that I’d written a great deal which gained me no marks at all. I hadn’t linked my paragraphs back to the question. I’d assumed the examiner already understood what I meant and skipped the explaining. And I’d left arguments with holes in them that a marker could climb straight through. Fixing those three habits did more for my grade than any amount of extra content revision – and they’re the main things I now look for in somebody else’s writing.
Why do Economics grades drop between GCSE and A-level?
This is the other call I get a lot: a student who got an 8 or a 9 at GCSE, now getting Bs and Cs in Year 12, and everyone’s baffled.
GCSE Economics is largely a recall subject. Know the definitions, explain the mechanism, get the marks. A-level asks for something different – weighing competing arguments, handling “it depends”, writing to a mark scheme that rewards doubt rather than certainty. A student who was brilliant at the first thing has no particular head start at the second, and often has the opposite: two years of being rewarded for confident, complete-sounding answers.
Worth knowing too that plenty of A-level Economics students never sat the GCSE at all. If your child is one of them, they’re not behind – the specifications overlap far less than people assume, and the ones who did GCSE are frequently the ones who have to unlearn the most.
A quick check you can do tonight – and you don’t need to know any Economics
Here’s the useful part: this test works even if you’ve never studied a day of Economics in your life.
Ask your child to explain something they’ve just learned – minimum wage, a subsidy, a rise in interest rates, whatever’s current. Let them finish. Then ask one question:
“Now make the opposite case.”
That’s it. If they can immediately give you the conditions under which they’d be wrong – if demand is inelastic, if it’s the short run rather than the long run, if firms absorb the cost rather than passing it on – they can evaluate, and their marks will follow. If they stall, or if they repeat the original argument more firmly, you’ve found the exact thing standing between them and the top band.
You don’t need to judge whether their economics is right. You only need to notice whether a second argument exists at all. That’s a parent-shaped test, not a teacher-shaped one.
And as with any subject, having them teach it back to you is excellent revision in its own right – it forces reasoning rather than recall. Ten minutes, free, and more diagnostic than a term of ticked homework.
It’s roughly how I run a first session too: conversation and pushing back, rather than a worksheet. A worksheet shows me what they got wrong. A conversation shows me why.
Do you need A-level Economics to study Economics at university?
Usually no – but you almost always need A-level Maths, and that catches people out every year.
Most UK Economics degrees, including the more competitive ones, don’t require A-level Economics. A good number of them positively don’t mind either way. What they do require, very often, is Maths – and sometimes a specific grade in it. So a student picking subjects with an Economics degree in mind should be checking Maths requirements first, and individual university entry requirements second, rather than assuming the subject with the matching name is the essential one.
That said, A-level Economics is genuinely useful preparation, it’s well regarded, and it’s one of the better subjects for showing you can build and defend an argument – which matters for Law, PPE, Business and History applications too.
If Maths is the bit that’s worrying you, that’s a separate conversation I’m happy to have.
What does an Economics tutor cost in the UK?
TutorLab’s 2026 figures put GCSE tutoring at £28–£55 per hour and A-level at £38–£75, averaging around £38 and £52 respectively. Economics sits at the expensive end of both – Tutorful’s published benchmark has it as one of the priciest subjects on the platform, ahead of Maths and Physics, because there simply aren’t that many Economics tutors about. Central London adds 20–30% again on top.
What do I cost?
Below those bands, and deliberately so. I price for the family working out whether tutoring is affordable at all, not the one with an open budget. My rate depends on how many sessions you want, whether it’s GCSE or A-level, and whether we’re online or in person – so the honest answer is: message me and I’ll tell you, with no sales call attached.
If you’re wondering where the catch is, there isn’t one. I’m an undergraduate, I’m building a track record (160+ completed bookings and 25+ five-star reviews), and I’d rather be affordable and busy than expensive and idle. I also just enjoy it – Economics especially, because the moment a student stops reciting and starts arguing is so rewarding to watch.
On whether tutoring is worth it at all: the Education Endowment Foundation – an independent charity, not a tutoring company – finds that one-to-one tuition adds around five months of additional progress over a year, and that it works best when it’s aimed at an identified weakness rather than delivered generically. Which is rather the point of everything above.
What does a session with your Economics tutor look like?
We start by reading their actual writing.
Not a diagnostic worksheet – a real essay or exam answer, ideally one that came back with a disappointing mark. Nine times out of ten I can show a student exactly where the marks went, in their own words, in the first twenty minutes. That tends to be the moment things click.
Technique gets taught explicitly, not absorbed.
Chains of reasoning, evaluation that isn’t tacked on, using the extract properly, diagrams that earn their place. These are learnable rules, not vague good judgement, and most students have never had them spelled out.
Small tasks between sessions, marked before we meet.
One essay plan, one 12-marker, one diagram redrawn properly – short and specific, not an hour of busywork. I mark it against the real mark scheme and we start the next session with it.
Current examples, because Economics rewards them.
Application marks come from real context, and the students who read a bit of economic news write noticeably better answers. I’ll point them at things worth reading rather than expecting it to happen by itself.
Flexible sessions, online or in person.
Standard sessions run 60 minutes, longer or shorter if that suits better. Online via Google Meet or Zoom, or in person around Loughborough and London.
Am I the right Economics tutor for your child?
Economics is one of my own A-levels, and one I did well in – I came out with an A, alongside an A* in Geography, a B in Biology and an A* in my EPQ. I sat the same papers your child is sitting, recently enough to remember exactly which parts were hard and why.
I’m now a Geography undergraduate at a top-10 UK university, which keeps me closer to this than it might sound: elasticity, index numbers, regression and 100 hours of statistics in my first year alone. And I run a business – I set prices, watch demand respond, and compete with people charging four times what I do. Economics stopped being theoretical for me some time ago, and that turns out to be very useful when a student asks the fair question of why any of this matters.
I tutor Economics at both GCSE and A-level, across AQA, Edexcel (A and B), OCR, WJEC/Eduqas and CIE. Alongside it I tutor Geography, Biology, Maths, English, and GCSE Chemistry and Physics, from Years 4 through 13. I also hold an Enhanced DBS check.
Where I’d point you elsewhere: if you’re after university-level Economics, or heavy econometrics support, I’m not your best option and I’ll say so rather than take the booking.
What parents say
Rachael D’s son needed exam technique more than content – which is the Economics problem in a nutshell:
“He helped my son hugely with exam technique tips and boosted his confidence before his assessment.”
Roseline A put it more plainly than I’ve managed anywhere above:
“Went over the topics carefully and made sure they were understood before moving on to more complicated parts.”
Nancy M has had me working with her son across several subjects. She described the sessions as tailored, with each topic properly grasped before we moved on, and said she’d seen noticeable progress in his learning and his exam preparation. She also called it a comfortable environment to ask questions in – which matters more than people think in a subject where “it depends” is the correct answer and students are frightened of sounding unsure.
Frequently Asked Questions — Economics Tutor
Which exam boards do you cover for Economics?
AQA, Edexcel (both A and B), OCR, WJEC/Eduqas and CIE, at both GCSE and A-level. The economics is the same everywhere; what differs is question structure and how the mark schemes reward evaluation, and that difference is worth a lot of marks. Tell me the board and I’ll work to it.
Do you tutor A-level Economics as well as GCSE?
Yes – Economics was one of my own A-levels, so this is a subject I take right through to A-level rather than stopping at GCSE.
My child understands the content but keeps getting mid-range marks. Can that be fixed?
That’s the single most common thing I’m asked to fix, and it’s usually the most fixable. It’s almost always a technique problem rather than a knowledge one – evaluation, chains of reasoning, or diagrams that aren’t being used – and technique responds quickly once someone names the specific issue.
Do you help with essay structure and evaluation specifically?
Yes, and it’s the bulk of what A-level Economics tutoring actually is. Bring me a marked essay and we’ll work from the real thing rather than a generic model answer.
Do you tutor online or in person?
Both. I’m based in Loughborough and London and tutor in person locally, with online sessions via Google Meet or Zoom for students further afield. Economics works particularly well online – a shared screen is better for annotating essays and drawing diagrams than two people hunched over one sheet of paper.
My child hasn’t done GCSE Economics but is starting it at A-level. Is that a problem?
No, and it’s very common. The specifications overlap less than people expect, and students coming in fresh often adapt faster to A-level’s style than those who spent two years being rewarded for confident recall.
Is it too late to start in Year 13, or Year 11?
No, though it changes the plan. With time, we rebuild technique properly. Later on, we prioritise the highest-value habits – evaluation, extract use, diagram discipline – which are exactly the things that move a grade quickly because they apply to every question on the paper.
Do you tutor subjects other than Economics?
Yes – Geography, Biology, Maths, English, and GCSE Chemistry and Physics, from Years 4 through 13. You can see the full range of tutoring services here, and if it’s primary support you’re after, Key Stage 2 tuition is here.
Ready to Turn Knowledge Into Marks? Get in Touch with Eddie
If your child knows their Economics but the grade doesn’t show it, get in touch for a free, no-obligation chat. Send over a marked essay if you have one – I can usually tell you where the marks are going before we’ve even booked a session.