Guide for parents · September 2026
Online science: losing the lab, widening the pool
Online science tutoring loses the lab but widens the pool of real specialists. How to check you are hiring the right one of three sciences.
The trade is unusually clear in science
Every subject loses something over a video call. Science loses the most obvious thing and gains the most concrete one, which makes the decision easier to reason about than in maths or English.
What it loses is the practical. No online session puts apparatus in your child's hands, produces a reading that disagrees with the prediction, or teaches what it feels like when an experiment goes wrong. That is school's job and it stays school's job.
What it gains is access to people who actually studied the subject. Science tutoring is the area where local supply is thinnest, because the pool of physicists and chemists willing to tutor in any given town is small. Remove the travel radius and a family anywhere in the UK can reach a specialist. For a narrow need, that is not a compromise; it is the better option.
Check which science you are hiring
Science is three degrees, and "science tutor" tells you nothing about which one. At Key Stage 3 this matters less, because the content is broad and shallow. From Year 10 onward it matters a great deal.
| What you need | What to ask before booking |
|---|---|
| Help with physics calculations | What did you study, and how much maths do you teach? |
| Chemistry equations and moles | Do you teach chemistry regularly or occasionally? |
| Biology long-answer technique | Do you mark extended answers and give written feedback? |
| Investigations and variables | How would you teach a fair test over video? |
| General Key Stage 3 catch-up | Which of the three are you weakest in? |
The last question is the informative one. A tutor who answers it straightforwardly is telling you they know their own limits, which is what you want from anybody working with your child.
Before assuming it is a science problem
Marks in science are lost for at least three different reasons, and only one of them is science. Physics questions fail on the algebra inside them. Biology answers lose marks because they describe rather than explain. Chemistry looks impossible when symbols are being memorised rather than read.
A parent who buys online science tutoring without sorting this out first may pay a science specialist's rate to teach rearranging formulae.
The maths side of that can be checked directly. Pobbi's learning check is twenty questions across eighteen skills, aimed at Year 5 to Year 9, taking about twelve minutes, free and with no card required. The items that matter for science are place value, multiplication and division, negative numbers, converting between fractions, decimals and percentages, and early algebra up to solving a two-step equation.
When something fails the check goes downwards rather than onwards, so a failed equation produces checks on simplifying expressions and on substituting a value. Skills are reported as secure at eighty per cent or above, still being practised between fifty and seventy-nine, or still being learned below fifty. If the algebra is in the bottom band, that is where the science lesson should start, and you now know to say so.
What Pobbi does not do here
There is no live teaching and nobody on the other end. Pobbi's science coverage is narrow — considerably narrower than its maths coverage — and it does not simulate practical work, hold an exam board specification, or claim to cover any nation's curriculum in full. The national curriculum in England is a reference for maintained schools rather than a universal one; academies arrange it themselves, and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own.
Where it is genuinely useful is narrow and worth stating plainly: separating a maths failure from a science failure, and giving short guided practice on the number skills underneath, with hints rather than answers when a question goes wrong.
When live online science is clearly worth buying
When the content is the gap and your child needs it explained by somebody who understands it properly. When a specific specialism is required and nobody locally has it. When exam technique for a named specification is the issue, because that is knowledge no general tool holds. And when your child is interested and wants to go further than the curriculum, which is one of the best reasons to hire anybody.
Questions about science help online
Can an online tutor teach practical skills?
They can teach the reasoning around an investigation — variables, anomalies, what a conclusion may claim. They cannot teach handling apparatus, and should not say they can.
My child says biology is just memorising.
That is usually a sign they are memorising rather than understanding it. Ask them to explain a process to you without notes; where it breaks down is the actual gap.
Is a general science tutor worth it at Key Stage 3?
Often yes, because the content is broad and shallow at that stage. From GCSE onward, specialism matters much more.
Should we hire before or after finding the gap?
After. Half an hour of sorting out whether the problem is maths, writing or science changes what you hire and how long you need them.