If you are looking for an economics tutor in London, here is the honest version. Every lesson is one-to-one and online, on a video call with a shared whiteboard, so a student in Croydon, Harrow or Hackney gets exactly the same lesson without the Tube. Sixth-formers sit AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Cambridge International; university students come from the capital’s economics departments with first-year micro, macro, econometrics and maths for economists. The promise is the same for all of them: focused prep, fewer sessions, exam-ready.
What exam-ready looks like, paper by paper (and how many sessions it takes)
Being exam-ready is simple to test: pick up any past paper for your board and say what each question is after before you look at the extract. The table sets that out for the three papers, with a rough session count from where most students start.
| Paper | What usually goes wrong | What we fix | Typical sessions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 (micro) | Diagrams with missing labels; “explain” answers that describe instead of analyse | Every core diagram from memory in a minute; chains of reasoning that earn the analysis marks | 4 to 6 |
| Paper 2 (macro) | AD and AS shifted the wrong way; evaluation that says “it depends” and stops | The shift rules; evaluation that weighs and reaches a judgement | 4 to 6 |
| Paper 3 (synoptic and data) | The extract ignored; the last long question unfinished | Numbers pulled from the data into the argument; a rehearsed timing plan | 3 to 4 |
| University modules | Problem sets attempted without the model behind them | The model first, then the problem set worked line by line on the whiteboard | As needed |
The rate is £60 an hour for A Level and £75 to £100 an hour for university modules, paid lesson by lesson. From the autumn mocks to the summer papers, most A Level students need somewhere between 10 and 15 sessions.
Indirect taxes and subsidies: who really pays
This is the topic where the diagram and the elasticity page meet, and every board sets it. A specific tax is a fixed sum per unit, like fuel duty per litre. It shifts the supply curve up by exactly the tax. Who ends up paying it depends on the price elasticity of demand, and the exam wants you to show that on two diagrams.
Start with a good whose demand is price inelastic, such as petrol. Supply is P = 20 + Q and the market clears at 20 units for £40. A £12 tax lifts supply to P = 32 + Q.
Buyers now pay £50, up £10. Sellers keep £38, down £2. Buyers carry £10 of the £12 tax because they barely cut back: quantity falls from 20 to 18, a drop of 10%. Revenue is £12 × 18 = £216, most of it the pale band that buyers pay. The deadweight loss triangle is small, £12, because so little trade is lost.
Now the same tax on a good whose demand is elastic, such as one brand of crisps with a shelf full of rivals. Same supply curve, same £12, same starting point of 20 units at £40. Only the demand curve is flatter.
Buyers pay £44, up only £4. Sellers keep £32, down £8. Buyers walk away, so quantity falls from 20 to 12, a drop of 40%, and the seller has to absorb most of the tax to keep them. Revenue is £12 × 12 = £144. The deadweight loss is £48, four times the inelastic case, because so much trade is lost.
| Demand is | Buyers pay | Sellers pay | Quantity | Revenue | Deadweight loss | Exam example |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inelastic (PED −0.4 here) | £10 of the £12 | £2 | Falls 10% | £216 | £12 | Fuel duty, tobacco duty, the sugar levy |
| Elastic (PED −4 here) | £4 of the £12 | £8 | Falls 40% | £144 | £48 | A tax on one brand or one restaurant chain |
The rule: the side of the market that is less elastic pays more of the tax. Buyers who cannot switch away pay. Sellers who cannot cut output pay. A subsidy runs the same logic backwards. It shifts supply down by the subsidy, buyers pay less and sellers receive more, and the split follows the same elasticity rule. With inelastic demand most of the subsidy shows up as a lower price; with elastic demand most of it shows up as more units sold.
Mark scheme: Edexcel’s specification names the areas it wants: the consumer incidence, the producer incidence, the government’s revenue and, for a subsidy, the consumer and producer share. Shade them, label them, and write one sentence each. OCR’s 2023 report praised answers that explained how a tax on tobacco raised production costs and so shifted supply, rather than “simply asserting” that supply moved left. The chain is the mark.
Exam tip: Draw the tax as a vertical gap between the two supply curves and label it with the amount. The buyer’s price is where the new supply curve meets demand. The seller’s price is directly below it on the old supply curve. Those three points are the whole diagram.
Common mistake: Shifting demand instead of supply. A tax on producers is a cost to producers, so supply moves. Demand does not move, it just decides how the tax is split. The other favourite is shading the whole rectangle from zero as revenue: revenue is the tax times the new quantity, not the old one.
The elasticity behind all this, PED and its friends, has its own page in the A Level economics revision notes, and the tax diagram sits with every other diagram on the A Level economics diagrams page.
How lessons work
Every lesson is one-to-one on a shared online whiteboard, and the board is saved afterwards with every diagram on it. An hour usually splits three ways: the first ten minutes go through last week’s answer against your board’s mark scheme; the middle thirty-five teach one topic or one skill in the form the paper asks for it; the last fifteen are a timed question, since writing under pressure is what the exam actually measures. You leave with one question to answer, and it is marked before you next meet.
| Tool | What it is used for |
|---|---|
| Video call | The lesson, one-to-one, camera on or off as you prefer |
| Shared whiteboard | Every diagram drawn live and saved as a PDF after each session |
| Past papers on screen | Your board’s real questions and mark schemes, open beside the whiteboard |
| One marked question a week | Written between lessons, returned marked before the next one |
| A shared folder | Every whiteboard, every marked answer, one place for revision |
Note: Most London students take their lessons online for the same reason everyone else does: the whiteboard keeps every diagram, and nobody spends forty minutes on the Northern line to get to a kitchen table. If an in-person session ever matters, ask, and I will tell you honestly whether it is possible.
From sixth form to a London university: one tutor, online
- Direct, not through an agency: the tutor who replies is the tutor who teaches.
- Past papers from your own board: whichever of AQA, Edexcel, OCR, Cambridge International, Edexcel IAL or Oxford AQA you sit, lessons use that board’s papers and mark schemes.
- Sixth form to university in one place: the same tutor takes A Level students through to first-year and second-year modules at the capital’s universities.
- Nothing lost to travel: every diagram and every marked answer is saved to your folder, and no lesson is cut short by the bus.
- No minimum commitment: book lessons singly.
FAQ
Q: Is there an economics tutor near me who teaches in person?
A: Lessons here are online. That is a choice, not a limitation: the shared whiteboard keeps every diagram, the marked questions come back between sessions, and the hour is spent on economics rather than on travel. Wherever you are in the capital, the lesson is the same.
Q: Which boards does an A Level economics tutor in the capital need to know?
A: All of them, because schools across the city use different ones: AQA 7136, Edexcel 9EC0, OCR H460, and Cambridge International and Edexcel International A Level at the international schools. Each is taught from its own papers.
Q: How much does economics tuition cost?
A: The rates are in the table above: one price for A Level, one range for university, no packages, pay per lesson.
Q: Can university students book, not just sixth-formers?
A: Yes. First-year and second-year modules in microeconomics, macroeconomics, econometrics and maths for economists are taught separately, at university level, on the same whiteboard. The A Level economics tutor page sets out the sixth-form offer; the university subject pages set out the rest.
Q: When is the best time to start?
A: Now, if you are in Year 13. A September start leaves time to fix Paper 1 and Paper 2 before the January mocks and to rehearse Paper 3 before the summer. Starting in Year 12 puts the diagram habits in place early, and Year 13 is lighter for it.
Q: What happens in the first lesson?
A: You bring one question you got wrong. It gets marked with you against the real mark scheme, find the level you reached and the sentence that would have moved you up one, and then plan the sessions around the papers you sit first.
Book your first economics lesson, in London or anywhere
Send your exam board or university module, your year, and the topic that is costing you marks. Expect an answer, and a first lesson time, within a day.
Book a lesson
Book your first one-to-one lesson
Tell me your exam board, your year and what you are stuck on. I reply within 24 hours to set up a first session. Every lesson is online, one-to-one, and built around your next paper.
- +44 7441 440060
- economics@econtutor.com
