You Understand the Physics — So Why Are You Still Getting Cs?
You Understand the Physics — So Why Are You Still Getting Cs?
Why bright students struggle with A-level Physics exam questions
Most of the students who come to 42tutoring are not struggling with A-level Physics because they don’t understand the content. In fact, many of them are clever, motivated, and genuinely enjoy physics — they can talk you through topics like momentum, circuits, and electromagnetic induction without a problem.
So why are they still getting Cs, Ds… sometimes even Us?
Here’s the painful truth:
You can understand the physics perfectly and still do poorly in the exam.
Because understanding the physics isn’t the same as knowing how to answer the questions.
And the worst part?
Students don’t even realise this is what’s happening.
“I failed the question, so I must not understand the topic.”
This is the cycle we see again and again:
A student sits a past paper or mock.
They get a low mark.
They assume they didn’t understand the physics.
They go back and revise that topic again — flashcards, videos, reading notes, the whole lot.
Next paper? Same problem. Still not scoring. Still confused.
But the issue wasn’t the physics.
The issue was exam techniques — and no one taught them how to fix that.
What’s actually going wrong?
They’re not spotting the command word.
They’re missing the number of marks.
They’re skim-reading and misinterpreting what’s really being asked.
They don’t know how to structure a proper “Explain” or “Discuss” answer.
We see it all the time. A student gets a question wrong and thinks: “I don’t understand this topic.”
But when we ask them to explain the physics, they can.
They just didn’t give the answer the examiner was looking for — and that’s where the marks are lost.
The result?
They waste hours re-revising physics they already understand —
instead of learning how to show what they know in a way that scores marks.
And that’s not their fault.
No one teaches exam technique properly.
Not in school. Not in most tutoring. Not on the internet.
And yet, it’s the #1 reason students underperform — especially the bright ones.
What we do differently
At 42tutoring, we specialise in A-level Physics only.
We’ve worked with hundreds of students who were stuck in that exact cycle — students who understood the content, but couldn’t turn it into marks.
And what we’ve found is simple:
The path to a better grade isn’t more revision.
It’s better exam strategy.
That’s what we teach.
So if your child’s working hard but still not improving — the problem might not be what physics they don’t know.
It might be exam techniques they need to practise.
👉 Want to see how we start?
Watch our free "Fields and Forces" Masterclass which shows you how to use our Ninja Question Analysis technique — where we teach students how to actually read an A-level Physics question (so you know what's on the mark scheme).
[Fields and Forces Masterclass]
