The wall is moles, and it arrives suddenly
Chemistry goes along reasonably well for most students, and then quantitative chemistry appears. Moles, relative formula mass, concentration, percentage yield, and suddenly a subject that felt like learning things becomes a subject that demands confident algebra and proportional reasoning.
Students who were coping fine stop coping, often within a fortnight, and because it happens fast they conclude that chemistry has become impossible. It hasn't. They've hit a maths bottleneck inside a science lesson, and it responds very well to being taught properly and slowly, once.
Chemistry asks you to think on three levels at once
Every chemical idea exists in three forms: what you can see happening (a fizzing beaker), what's happening to the particles (electrons transferring), and how it's written down (the symbol equation). Confident students move between all three without noticing. Struggling students are usually stuck in one.
A student who can balance an equation but couldn't tell you what the numbers mean in terms of particles is working symbolically only — and they'll come apart the moment a question requires explanation rather than procedure. Diagnosing which level a student is stuck on is most of the work.
What we cover
Atomic structure and the periodic table, bonding and structure, quantitative chemistry (moles, concentration, yield), chemical changes and electrolysis, energy changes, rates and equilibrium, organic chemistry, chemical analysis, the atmosphere, and using resources — plus the required practicals.
All UK exam boards: AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC/Eduqas and Cambridge International. Combined Science and Triple both covered.
The required practicals are free marks
They're examined every year, they're predictable, and they're the last thing most students revise. Method, variables, expected results, sources of error and improvements — all of it can be taught without a lab, because what's being examined is understanding of the experiment, not the ability to perform it.
Common questions
Do you teach A-Level chemistry?
No. I trained as a physics teacher, and A-Level chemistry deserves a chemistry specialist. At GCSE the depth is well within my range and I've taught it for two decades. At A-Level I stick to physics and maths — I'd rather point you elsewhere than take your money for something I can't do properly.
My child is fine at chemistry until the calculations.
That's the moles bottleneck, and it's the single most common thing I'm called about in chemistry. It's a proportional-reasoning problem more than a chemistry problem, and it usually takes a handful of sessions rather than a term.
Combined Science or Triple?
Both are fine — the chemistry in Combined Science is a subset of the Triple content, so the teaching is identical, there's just less of it. Tell me which your child is taking and I'll work to the right specification.