The team

Built by tutors, not by tech.

We've been teaching Computer Science across the UK for twenty years between us, running a tutoring agency, building a revision platform — and writing the software that runs all of it. Smash Your Tutoring is our daily-driver, not our pitch deck.

Co-founder

James Woodhouse

Co-founder, Smash Your Tutoring

I started teaching Computer Science around 2008, back when the spec was still the dying days of old GCSE ICT and the new CS A-Level was finding its feet. I spent the next decade in classrooms, then private tutoring, then running an agency to coordinate the tutors I'd built up over the years.

In 2021 I co-founded Smash Your Exams with Paul — the GCSE / A-Level revision platform thousands of UK students now use to drill exam questions and revision notes against the actual specification. That experience showed us how an education product built by working teachers, who understand what students are actually struggling with, beats anything built by a Silicon Valley team.

The agency side of the business kept getting in the way of the teaching side. By 2024 I was spending more time chasing parents for payment + reconciling Xero against Stripe than I was tutoring. Every off-the-shelf option was either built for the US, built for solo tutors, or built so generically that we were configuring fields off for the first month. So we built our own.

Today I write most of the platform code, run the agency on it, and take the support calls when something breaks. That feedback loop is the whole point.

Co-founder

Paul Robson

Co-founder, Smash Your Tutoring

I've been a private tutor for the better part of two decades — Computer Science at GCSE and A-Level, with the odd dive into Maths and Physics when a parent asks. In that time I've sat with hundreds of students, watched a thousand-odd lessons across our agency's tutors, and seen every reason a student bounces off the curriculum.

My day job is still teaching. Most days I have lessons back-to-back from 4pm onwards. That's deliberate: features get tested against real lessons (not focus groups) before we ship them. The friction I hit using the platform on a Tuesday evening at 6pm is the friction that gets prioritised on Wednesday morning.

Co-founder of Smash Your Exams alongside the agency, the revision platform, and Smash Your Tutoring. The thread connecting all three is the same: build the things that working teachers actually need.

Got a question about your tutoring agency?

Either of us will answer. We've probably hit the same wall already.

Get in touchRead the blog