GCSE Religious Studies Tutor

A GCSE Religious Studies tutor aims to help students develop a sympathetic, inquisitive, and critical approach to the study of religion.

GCSE Religious Studies students will be exposed to the complex and diverse nature of religion. They will learn the ways in which this nature is reflected in the experience, belief and practice of different faiths and non-religious groups. GCSE Religious Studies Tutor will help students will tackle questions of belief, truth, purpose, meaning, value, and their influence on different cultures through the reading of key religious texts.

What a GCSE Religious Studied Tutor will help explain?

Exam boards

It’s important to identify which exam board your child’s school is following for GCSE Religious Studies as they do vary, for example, they tend to offer different choices of religions to study. This is one of the first questions we will ask you should you give us a call.

The main exam boards for GCSE Religious Studies are:

Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations (OCR)
Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA)
Edexcel
Cambridge IGCSE
Welsh Joint Education Committee (WJEC).

Components a GCSE Religious Studies Tutor will cover

Course content can vary depending on the exam board. However, each student will study the beliefs, teachings and practices of at least two world religions from:

Buddhism
Christianity
Catholic Christianity
Hinduism
Islam
Judaism
Sikhism

GCSE Religious Studies students will be required to complete an examination on each of these religions. They will be addressing a range of different topics including:

Worship
Beliefs and sacred writings
Festivals, fasts, pilgrimage/historic places
Religion in the family setting
Religion and social action
Living the religious life
Matters of Life and Death

What skills will students learn?

As students study GCSE Religious Studies over the course of two years, a GCSE Religious Educations tutor will help develop their abilities to:

use relevant knowledge in order to describe the religious practices, experiences and beliefs of others,
display understanding of the significance of religious beliefs and practices for believers,
acknowledge and understand religious responses to contemporary issues, both personal and social,
employ evidence and sound argument to evaluate different views on issues arising from religious belief and practice,
demonstrate an exacting use of key religious terminology

Students taking a GCSE Religious Studies exam

How will a GCSE Religious Studies Tutor help you do well?

To do well in GCSE Religious Studies exams it is vital for your child to have a strong grasp of the religions studied so that they have all the key terms, facts and practices. However, the key to success in Religious Studies is not just about knowing content – a student’s ability to use that content in an analytical way to construct coherent and convincing arguments is critical. A GCSE Religious Studied Tutor will help equip students with the skills to write an in depth analysis gain high marks.

Additionally, a strong understanding of the command words used in exams is invaluable as then a student can be confident that a question has been answered properly. For example if a question asks for a student to ‘give’ or ‘state’ an answer, a single word or very short response is required whereas ‘outline’ or ‘describe’ may require a brief response, focused on the key aspects of a topic. The construction of precise written arguments and explanations supported by evidence is also important, which will require a focus on exam technique as well as the use of practice papers.

Understand the mark scheme

It is important to have an understanding of how your child’s GCSE Religious Studies exams will be marked. Understanding this can help to provide the right support throughout your child’s revision. All the exam boards publish detailed guidance on what they are looking for. Your GCSE Religious Studies Tutor will know this like the back of their hand.

Your child needs to know what the examiner wants from them in every type of question. They then need to learn how to ‘tick the boxes’ on the mark scheme to ensure they pick up the most marks they can. Knowledge of command words is vital for this. Learning different exam question styles will be an essential part of your child’s time with their GCSE Religious Education Tutor.

Make a revision plan

It is important that your child allows enough time for revision process. They need to do their work properly. Your GCSE Religious Studies tutor will have a structured revision plan by the January of their exam year.

Quality revision

GCSE Religious Studies students can often make the mistake of attempting to revise by simply reading their textbook or notes and hoping all the terms and quotations are absorbed. A GCSE Religious Studies tutor can help form far more effective strategies. Such as using active revision methods such as flashcards, mind-maps and quotation sheets.

There are online resources available. However, we believe it is much more useful for students to create their own. The act of making their own revision will kick start the learning process. Students will then be flexible to alter and adapt these revision tools to their own particular learning styles and specific areas of the course they are focusing on. An example of this could be making a quotation sheet of 15 concise quotations that could are produced for each unit of study. In addition to learning all the necessary content, students can greatly improve their grades by assigning time to take practice revision exams and to mark these against examiner reports and exam specifications.

Sitting Public exams for the first time

Sitting important public exams comes with pressures that your child may never have experienced before. Although a small amount of pressure can help your child’s performance on the day, it is important they have some time to unwind. It is important for students to take some time to relax. Therefore, they should take time to do something social and something they love.