Tutor profile - Georgina

Georgina has over twelve years’ teaching experience, including six years teaching A Level Chemistry. Additionally, she has extensive research experience completing both a PhD and postdoctoral studies.

Before embarking on a career in education, Georgina graduated from Sussex University in 2002, after a four year course that included a year studying abroad. She was then accepted as a doctoral student at Sussex University and completed a wide ranging thesis covering both experimental and theoretical Inorganic and Physical Chemistry. After this she worked as a postdoctoral research scientist at Oxford University in the Inorganic Chemistry Labs.
In 2010 Georgina went on to study and train with the Inspire PGCE program at Imperial College. This gave her valuable skills teaching KS3, KS4 and KS5 science at two different schools across London. She also delivered a set of outreach talks at another six schools. These were themed around her research interests in Catalytic Chemistry. Currently she maintains an ongoing interest in chemical research and evidence based teaching methods, and was recently (in 2018) awarded MRSC status with the Royal Society of Chemistry. She uses these skills to help her students develop a deeper understanding and interest in their studies, so that they start to enjoy their homework and revision and go on to improve their examination outcomes.

It is through tailored personalised courses of tutoring, that her students improve and build their Chemistry confidence. She helps her students to realise that, wherever they are starting from, it is possible with ongoing checks of prior knowledge, and repeated honing of study skills to improve their exam results.

Nearly all of her thousands of past students have gone on to University, Medical School or work in the Scientific Sector via Apprenticeships. Many of her students also achieved medals in extra-curricular exams such as the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge. She also has experience adapting revision resources for a student aiming to complete the Cambridge International Pre-U Chemistry qualifications. Additionally, Georgina has recently tutored organic chemistry to undergraduate level.

Georgina examines for one of the main A Level Chemistry examination boards and in 2019 she achieved an award from the Joint Council for Qualifications for “services to examining”. Her students benefit from this expertise, as she is highly aware of the common mistakes made by candidates. She can help her students build some key techniques into their academic skill set that will help them to avoid making these errors. She ensures that her students, through practice and revisiting of key concepts and skills, are aware of how to answer examination questions with the appropriate attention to detail.

Georgina now specialises in online tuition and learning, and has also authored and reviewed several large sets of online lessons for a distance-learning international A Level Chemistry course. Her online tutees have all proven to benefit from this expertise, and enjoy completing her interactive and engaging lessons.

Case Studies:

A year 11 student was quite anxious about his upcoming summer exams in iGCSE Chemistry. The aim of the sessions was to ensure he achieved a grade 7 in his exams. He thought he would get a grade 6. They went through and diagnosed some target areas, via completion of a range of multiple choice questions. He then completed a course of lessons over a three month period prior to his exams, with the first six lessons focusing on his target areas. He started to improve his knowledge and understanding. Throughout this time he also completed synoptic examination questions, so that Georgina could continually monitor his progress. He started to complete some of the additional practice problems that were given to him in-between sessions, and then he would often attempt to self-mark them. He benefited from the positive feedback and support that Georgina offered throughout. He became confident in completing examination papers after only 6 lessons. He kept practicing and at one point started asking Georgina for extra work! This was a different more confident student compared to when he first signed up for tuition. He actually achieved an 8 in his iGCSE Chemistry and went on to do A Level Chemistry.

An Oxford Biology graduate healthcare worker who wanted to apply to one of the few funded Post-Graduate Medical courses of study. She lacked a good grade in A Level Chemistry and wanted to achieve an A to make her application stand out. She had achieved a D grade on her first attempt, in 2018, at AQA A Level Chemistry. This was because she, in her own words; “underestimated A Level Chemistry”. She then decided, alongside working long hours in a care home, to repeat the exams the following year and again entered as an independent candidate. This time she was matched with Georgina and they put together a structured plan of lessons focusing on the second year topics, alongside synoptic year one problems, to ensure that year one topics continued to be reinforced. Between January 2019 to June 2019 she completed at least one face to face two hour lesson, and sometimes an additional one hour online lesson each week. This ensured that she covered and learnt the entire syllabus. She did not always manage to complete all the additional work set, due to the demands of her care work, but despite this, she stayed positive and she would cover a huge amount of learning each session. She was encouraged by Georgina to ask questions and this helped her improve immensely. When she completed additional practice problems between sessions, she would often show Georgina these, and then any areas of misunderstanding could be cleared up. Georgina gave ongoing face to face, online and email support to help this student through her studies. In the end she got an A grade in her Summer 2019 A Level exam. She then went on to get three interviews and offers from St George’s, UoL and Warwick. She’s recently accepted a place at St George’s, starting in August 2020.

A year 11 International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program student wanted some help with her Chemistry studies. She was already achieving a reasonable grade 5 (out of 7) but wanted to improve this. Since autumn 2019 this student has been doing online tuition with Georgina. In June 2020 she received a prize in her schools end of year award ceremony for being one her years “top five Chemistry students”. She has also achieved a grade seven in her end of year exam, as well as several grade sevens in various pieces of investigative coursework this semester. She is very pleased with her progress and is now looking forward to studying Chemistry at Higher Level through year 12 and year 13.

A IB HL Chemistry student in Germany was struggling with the demands of the course, and needed some help catching up. Georgina has been delivering long term support since the Summer of 2019 and the student has moved from a 3 up to now achieving 5s, 6s and 7s in various assessments. This upwards trend in achievement has meant he now feels much more confident about his IB exams. He is looking ahead to the future with optimism. We have also had some great news that he has been accepted, provisionally, for several Chemistry Engineering degrees at a range of Irish and European universities. We have just fount out that he has finished his final IB exams and in his own words; "I feel it went really well - like a 5-7". [In the IB a 7 is the highest grade]. He recently found out he achieved a very high borderline 5/6 and has been accepted onto Chemical Engineering degree course (updated Aug 2021)

An OCR A student had been struggling to maintain her Chemistry studies and learning to her normal high levels throughout 2020 and 2021. I took her on as an online student during Lockdown 1, and have helped her to improve her understanding and motivation with regular weekly online lessons. We covered new material and also regularly revisited year 1 A level concepts. On returning to College she managed to maintain her grades at a consistently high A grade and has been predicted an A. I kept tutoring her throughout her upper sixth year and she would usually ask several days ahead of her session, what she wanted to cover that week. She has also applied, and has been accepted to Medical School. I have every confidence that she will do well in her Summer assessments and will go on to be a fantastic doctor (updated May 2021).

A mature student came to me at the end of 2019 to cover the entire EdExcel GCE Chemistry Syllabus. The key goal being to successfully apply to study Biomedical Sciences at University. For this she needs an A grade. Practical assessments had previously been completed over a couple of weeks at a tutorial college. We then methodically worked through the syllabus with a pre-planned scheme of work. She had been deeply nervous about entering examinations due to prior trauma, however she went and sat her October Chemistry exams which was in itself a huge achievement for her.
She has kept studying with me (mainly online) and is now much less anxious about sitting exams. I have regularly set tests for her as well as revisiting concepts as well as covering new material. I felt comfortable predicting her an A grade on her UCAS. The good news is is that she has been accepted onto a Biomedical Sciences course at Kings College London, starting in Autumn 2021. Recently she has sat a range of assessments as an external candidate at a college, and has already heard back that she achieved an A grade across all the assessments that have been submitted to the examination board. This is a reflection that with motivation, a consistent approach to studying and ongoing support from a teacher, anyone has the potential to achieve a good outcome in their Chemistry Studies. Aug 2021: A grade achieved and medical school place confirmed.

A bright IB HL Chemistry student needed long term support to help him improve his understanding and confidence in the subject. He had not been progressing as he had hoped at school and was often achieving the equivalent of a 5/6 borderline in tests. At the end of 2020, when he was in year 12, Georgina started regular tuition with 1.5 hours for at least 3 out of every 4 weeks in the month. It was quickly apparent to Georgina that this student needed challenging and teaching of key concepts above the specification level, so that he could fully understand the concepts. This growth of his deeper understanding, as well as him then passing on his knowledge to fellow students in his class, no doubt helped him to achieve a 44/45 in his final IB result in July 2022. To quite this student "I got a 7 in Chemistry! I got a 44 overall score! I did it! I want to thank you so much for all of the help, it really means a lot to me. " (Aug 2022)

In 2023 Georgina began tutoring an IB Chemistry student who was halfway through her HL studies and had already completed most of the SL portion of the course. While she had a good grasp of some fundamental concepts, key areas, such as the differences in electronegativity, needed further clarification. Throughout our time together, we identified the mathematical aspects of chemistry as a key focus area, and we dedicated much of our tutoring sessions to mastering the physical chemistry topics in the IB syllabus (e.g., Amount of Substance, Thermodynamics, Acids and Bases, Kinetics, and Equilibria).

We also devoted significant time to creating revision notes and working through Q&As, particularly in Organic Chemistry. The student was eager to learn how to better organize her notes and express Chemistry concepts more concisely. Although these skills were still developing when we first started, she made remarkable progress by the end of our tutoring.

Her dedication, combined with my tailored support and resources, allowed her to fill in substantial knowledge gaps, ultimately leading to her achieving a 5 in HL Chemistry on results day! She was absolutely thrilled, as this result exceeded her expectations and paved the way for a smooth transition to the next stage of her higher education journey.

In her own words: "Yes, as I revised more and more and did a lot more practice papers, my confidence and knowledge definitely grew in Chemistry. Thank you for all of your help, and I am very happy with my results :)" (Sept 2024)