IB, IGCSE & A-Level Physics Tutors in Hong Kong

Look at where marks actually go in an IB or IGCSE physics paper and a pattern appears. Students rarely fail to recognise the physics being tested — the specification is public and their school has covered it. They lose marks on:

• Rearrangement under pressure. Making a the subject of a three-variable equation should take five seconds, not fifty. When it does not, the student runs out of time on the later questions.
• Units and prefixes. Millimetres entered as metres, kilojoules treated as joules. The physics is right and the mark is gone.
• Significant figures and uncertainty. In IB especially, uncertainty propagation is examined explicitly and is one of the most reliably under-prepared topics on the paper.
• Graph work. Gradients that need a tangent, intercepts that mean something physical, log plots in the HL material.

None of these are physics problems. All of them are physics marks. In the first weeks with a new student we drill this layer deliberately, because it lifts the grade faster than any amount of extra content coverage.

The IB course rewards precision in a way that catches students out. Definitions are marked strictly, "explain" and "describe" are different instructions with different mark allocations, and Paper 1's multiple choice punishes students who reason loosely and pick the plausible option.

What we cover

• Paper 1 technique — how to eliminate rather than derive, and when to move on.
• Paper 2 structured questions — laying out working so method marks survive an arithmetic slip.
• The HL extension topics, which are where SL-to-HL movers most often struggle: fields, induction, and quantum and nuclear physics.
• The Internal Assessment — research question, variables, uncertainty treatment, and the evaluation section that separates a 5 from a 7.
• Options and the practical scheme of work as your school's programme requires.

The IA is worth 20% of the subject grade and is the most controllable mark on the course, so we treat it as a project with deadlines rather than something to be rescued the week before submission.

IGCSE Physics is more about breadth and recall discipline than depth. Students who are strong at maths often coast and then lose marks on the descriptive and experimental questions, which reward learned phrasing.

• Cambridge (CAIE) 0625 / 0972 and Edexcel Physics, plus Combined and Coordinated Science routes.
• Paper 6 / practical paper technique — variables, control, precision, and how to write an improvement that earns a mark rather than restating the method.
• Core versus Extended decisions, and the honest conversation about which tier a student should sit.
• Topic drilling across forces and motion, thermal physics, waves, electricity and magnetism, and atomic physics.

The step from IGCSE to A-Level Physics is the largest jump most students meet, and it happens at the same time as the jump in A-Level Maths. We tutor both, usually together.

• Mechanics, materials, waves and electricity in the first year; fields, capacitance, nuclear and thermal physics in the second.
• Practical endorsement work and the written practical questions.
• Synoptic paper preparation, where questions deliberately cross topics.
• For applicants to Physics and Engineering courses, we also prepare students for the admissions tests those courses require.

A typical 90-minute session runs: a short retrieval quiz on the previous topic, worked examples of the new material with the tutor thinking aloud, then student practice on real past-paper questions while the tutor watches the working. The final ten minutes set the week's independent practice.

Parents receive a short written note after each block — what was covered, what the student is now doing reliably, and what still needs work. We would rather tell you a topic is not secure than report a comfortable summary.