IB Chemistry tuition, SL and HL

Specialist one-to-one support for students who want to understand the chemistry clearly, approach unfamiliar problems confidently and convert their knowledge into marks. Available online internationally and in person in London

Supporting students in the UK, Switzerland, the UAE and internationally.

How I help with IB Chemistry

Build secure understanding

I first identify whether the difficulty lies in the current topic or in an earlier idea that was never fully understood. We then rebuild the reasoning carefully, so that the student is not relying on memorised steps that fail when a question is presented differently.

Chemistry also asks students to picture things they cannot see, and some of the most important ideas are abstract. Where a concept is hard to visualise, I make it concrete — through a familiar real-life example or an online simulation — so that the student holds a clear mental picture rather than a form of words. Organic chemistry in particular can feel like an endless list to memorise. I teach it in a structured way, organised around the functional groups and their characteristic properties and reactions, so that the material becomes far easier to manage and to recall under pressure.

Turn understanding into marks

Knowing the chemistry is not always enough. Each answer has to match what the question is really asking: the command term — state, explain, deduce — sets how much detail is needed. Alongside this, a student must write balanced equations with correct state symbols, show clear working in calculations, carry significant figures correctly through to the final answer, use units correctly in mole and enthalpy work, and draw organic structures clearly and unambiguously.

Formal definitions are a common weak point. Many students understand an idea but lose marks because they cannot state it in the precise technical language the mark scheme expects. I work on this directly, so that a student can give a clean, exact definition rather than an approximate one. I teach these habits alongside the content, rather than leaving examination technique until the end.

Teach around the whole student

Students rarely take chemistry on its own, and the other subjects shape how they learn it. A student who also takes Higher Level Mathematics is usually confident with the calculations but may want more from the written, conceptual answers; a student who takes Higher Level Biology is often strong on the theory but less secure on the quantitative side. I plan lessons with the whole combination in mind, building on the strengths a student already has and giving more time to the parts they find harder.

Preparing for the IB Chemistry examinations

Thorough knowledge of the syllabus content and comprehensive revision come first, but on their own they are rarely enough. IB Chemistry questions often combine several ideas in an unfamiliar setting, and a student may understand each topic separately and still not know how to begin. What closes that gap is working through questions topic by topic — the IB’s questionbank holds both real past examination questions and further questions of the same kind — so that practice happens under real conditions rather than as general revision.

Practising with the right questions

The questionbank is particularly useful because questions can be filtered by topic, by paper and by difficulty. A student who needs to strengthen one theme, or who wants to work only on harder Paper 2 questions, can practise exactly that rather than working through material at random. Mark schemes then show how examiners award the marks, which is often where marks are quietly lost: an answer can be chemically correct and still incomplete because it omits a state symbol, a sign, or the precise term the scheme requires.

Practice also builds the independence the examination rewards. The aim is not to complete the next set of questions, but to become able to unpack an unfamiliar question, decide which principles apply, and judge whether an answer is chemically reasonable before moving on.

Understanding the practical side

A large part of chemistry is practical, and the written papers test that understanding directly. Paper 1B and parts of Paper 2 ask students to interpret experimental data, so it is not enough to have carried out a titration or a calorimetry experiment — a student must understand the theory behind it, why the method works, and where its errors come from. I teach the reasoning behind the standard practical techniques, the calculations that go with them, and the way the same chemistry appears in industry and everyday life, so that the ideas are secure whichever form the question takes.

Two habits protect marks in this area. The first is handling data honestly and carefully: propagating uncertainties, and reading a graph properly, including drawing minimum and maximum gradient lines when a question asks for the uncertainty in a slope. The second is treating easy questions with the same care as hard ones. A mark from a straightforward calculation counts exactly as much as a mark from a difficult one, and students tend to forgive their own careless slips because they knew the chemistry and assume it will not happen again — but it does. My aim is that a careless mistake is not made even once.

Urgent one-off session

Occasionally a student needs help immediately rather than as part of ongoing tuition. If that is your situation, I keep limited availability for single sessions.