Physics and Maths Tutor: What PMT Is and How to Build a Revision Routine Around It
Physics and Maths Tutor — usually known as PMT, at physicsandmathstutor.com — is a free UK website that organises past exam papers, mark schemes, revision notes and worked video solutions for GCSE, IGCSE, AS-Level and A-Level students. It covers subjects including Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology, sorted neatly by exam board (AQA, Edexcel, OCR, Eduqas, WJEC and CAIE among others), by qualification level, and often by topic, so students can find exactly the past questions they need without hunting through exam board websites.
If you have searched for "physics and maths tutor", you are almost certainly looking for PMT itself rather than a private tuition service — it is one of the most bookmarked free resources in UK secondary education, used by hundreds of thousands of students every month during exam season. This article explains what PMT offers, how students typically build a revision routine around it, and where an AI study tool like Applaa fits in as a complement — not a replacement.
What Physics and Maths Tutor Offers
PMT's core strength is organisation. Rather than students trawling exam board archives, PMT groups everything by subject, board, level and often topic, which saves enormous amounts of time during revision.
- Past papers and mark schemes for GCSE, IGCSE, AS-Level and A-Level, spanning AQA, Edexcel, OCR, Eduqas, WJEC and CAIE, across Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology and more.
- Topic-sorted questions — papers broken down by topic (for example, "Forces" in Physics or "Trigonometry" in Maths) rather than only by full past paper, which is useful once you know your weak areas.
- Revision notes and factsheets summarising specification content per exam board.
- Worked video solutions for many past paper questions, showing full working rather than just a final answer.
- Model answers and mark scheme guidance, useful for understanding how marks are actually awarded, not just whether an answer is "right".
Students typically use PMT in the run-up to mocks and final exams: working through a full past paper under timed conditions, marking it against the official scheme, then going back to the topic-sorted questions to drill any area where marks were lost.
Building an Effective Revision Routine with Past Papers
Past papers are one of the most evidence-backed revision tools available, but they work best as part of a structured routine rather than done in isolation the week before an exam. A few principles make past-paper practice far more effective:
- Do topics first, full papers later. Early in revision, use topic-sorted questions to find and fix specific weak spots. Save full timed past papers for the final few weeks, closer to exam conditions.
- Mark honestly against the scheme, then reflect. The real learning happens after marking — working out why a mark was lost, not just noting that it was.
- Use active recall, not re-reading. Testing yourself with questions (rather than re-reading notes) is consistently shown to improve retention more effectively.
- Space it out. Revisit the same topic a few days or weeks later rather than cramming it once — spaced repetition beats a single intense session.
- Track your weak topics over time so revision time goes where it is actually needed, not just where it feels comfortable.
This is where most students hit a bottleneck. PMT gives you the organised paper and the mark scheme, but if you get a question wrong and the mark scheme doesn't quite explain why your method fell short, you are stuck waiting for a teacher, a tutor, or a video that may not cover that exact question.
Where an AI Tutor Like Applaa Adds Instant, Personalised Help
Applaa is a free UK AI learning platform built for exactly this gap. Where PMT gives you the organised past paper and the official answer, Applaa's AI tutor gives you an instant, personalised explanation the moment you get a question wrong — breaking down where your working went off track, in plain language, without waiting for a lesson or a video that might not match your specific error.
A practical way students combine the two: work through a PMT past paper as normal, mark it against the official scheme, then bring any question you got wrong (or didn't fully understand) into Applaa for an instant walkthrough. Because Applaa also generates fresh practice questions targeted at your weak topics, you are not limited to the finite pool of past papers once you have exhausted them — you can keep drilling a tricky topic like moments in Physics or algebraic fractions in Maths with new questions rather than repeating ones you have already memorised the answers to.
Applaa covers GCSE, A-Level, 11+ and coding practice, and — like PMT — it is free to use, which matters for students revising without the budget for private tuition. The two resources are genuinely complementary: PMT for the breadth and authority of real exam-board material, Applaa for the instant, one-to-one explanation and adaptive practice that a static answer sheet can't provide.
Getting the Most from Both
Neither resource replaces the other. PMT remains one of the best free places in the UK to find genuine, exam-board-authentic past papers, mark schemes and topic-sorted questions — that authority and organisation is hard to beat. Applaa's role is to sit alongside that practice, turning a wrong answer into an instant, personalised explanation and unlimited fresh questions on exactly the topics you are struggling with, rather than leaving you to work it out alone or wait for the next lesson.
If you are building a revision routine this term, try pairing the two: pull a topic-sorted question set or full past paper from PMT, mark it properly, then head to Applaa to get instant explanations on anything you missed and generate extra practice until the topic sticks. It's free, it takes a few minutes to set up, and it turns marking a past paper from a dead end into the start of your next study session.