ICT & Computing

Our first step is to confirm which examining board and specification your child is working with. Once we know that, we can tailor the lessons to the precise requirements of that specification.

We can help pupils prepare for examinations with all of the common examining boards – AQA, OCR and WJEC for Computing; AQA, OCR and Edexcel for A level ICT.

All the specifications assess pupils through a combination of theory papers and coursework.

In our experience, there are three things which are key to achieving top marks in these exams – practical ability, theoretical knowledge, and a really good grasp of precisely what the examiners are looking for. Our tuition is therefore structured around these key issues:-

1. Through practical exercises, we help students acquire the general skills* they will need to use in their coursework. In the case of ICT, this usually involves learning to use Microsoft Excel and Access. For Computing, most students learn to program in Visual Basic using VB.Net, although we can also provide lessons in the Pascal programming language if your child’s school uses that instead.
2. We explain the theoretical material in detail to give pupils an understanding of the type and style of questions that they will encounter on written exam papers. We also look at exam technique, and how their answers should be structured.
3. We explain how coursework is marked, thus enabling students to work in the way which is most likely to help them obtain high marks.

Throughout all of this work, both in practical exercises and in theory work, the emphasis is on working through past papers and making pupils familiar with how those papers are marked.

* We must emphasise that the examining boards do not permit us to provide advice on the specific content of coursework – this would be regarded as cheating. However, in our experience, the more general topics we cover to make a huge difference to how well students fare in their exams.