For parents & carers
How much does GCSE tutoring cost?
Most GCSE tutors advertise between about £30 and £60 an hour, and more in London. It adds up quickly: one hour a week in one subject from September to May is around 30 sessions, so roughly £900 to £1,800 for the year. About three in ten secondary pupils in England and Wales have had private tutoring, and in London it is 45%.
Last updated 23 September 2026 · Written and fact-checked by the GCSEwiz team
What a year of tutoring adds up to
Hourly rates hide the real number, which is the total across a school year. Taking a Year 11 year as September to May, with holidays and mock weeks out, gives about 30 weeks of sessions:
- The rates are the typical advertised range, not a quote. Travel, materials and agency fees come on top where they apply.
| Pattern | Sessions | At £30 an hour | At £45 an hour | At £60 an hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One subject, fortnightly | 15 | £450 | £675 | £900 |
| One subject, weekly from February only | 14 | £420 | £630 | £840 |
| One subject, weekly | 30 | £900 | £1,350 | £1,800 |
| Two subjects, weekly | 60 | £1,800 | £2,700 | £3,600 |
| Three subjects, weekly | 90 | £2,700 | £4,050 | £5,400 |
How many families pay for it?
More than you might think, and the gap between areas is wide. In the Sutton Trust's latest polling of young people (carried out by Ipsos and published in February 2026), 29% of secondary pupils in England and Wales said they had had private tutoring at some point. In London it was 45%, against 27% in the rest of England.
The same polling found 30% of pupils from the best-off households had been tutored, against 23% from the worst-off. The gap has narrowed over time, but it is still there, and it matters most in the subjects where one stuck topic can cost a grade.
What pushes the price up or down
Online tutors usually charge less than home visits, partly because nobody is paying for travel time. Qualified teachers and current examiners charge more, and London rates run well above the rest of the country. Small-group tuition costs less per child, and agencies add their margin on top of what the tutor receives.
The most expensive hour is the one that is not needed. Before booking, it is worth asking the school what it already runs: many schools offer small-group sessions or revision clinics, especially for maths and English, and a teacher can often say which topic is actually holding a student back.
Getting more from each paid hour
A tutor is at their most valuable for a specific problem: one subject that has stalled, a topic that never clicked, or exam technique late in the course. They are poor value as a general revision timetable, because most of what makes a grade move is practice, and practice happens between sessions.
- Book for a named problem ("quadratics and simultaneous equations", "the 12-mark religious studies questions"), not "maths".
- Bring evidence: recent mock papers, marked homework, or a list of topics that keep going wrong.
- Ask what the student should practise before the next session, and check it happens.
- Review after half a term. If the problem is fixed, stop or switch to a new one.
The cheaper routes, honestly
Plenty of students reach their target grade without a tutor. Free resources, school revision sessions and a steady habit of practice questions cover a lot of ground, and a practice app costs a small fraction of one weekly tutor. What a good tutor adds that none of those can is a person watching the student's reasoning live and spotting the misunderstanding underneath the wrong answer. Pay for that when it is what's missing.