How to boss GCSEs and A-Levels
With exams looming, we asked our mentors how they prepare students through the process, where the find the best online resources and how to make the most of your time off.
Organise your resources
The biggest challenge in the ‘base’ preparation phase is about organisation.
Are your files all in one place? Are your notes organised? Do you have a mixture online and/or on paper?
Decide what works for you and stick to it. This is boring work, but it will make a huge difference in the long term. By Easter, everything should be in place, but going back to check through everything will ensure you don’t find something missing the night before a big exam.
Structure your day
With so many plates to spin, revising for public exams, especially GCSEs when you have maybe 10-12 subjects, can feel like trying to do ten things at once. Long days spent on particular subjects is going to leave you overexposed in others. The secret is to focus on two or three subjects per day (GCSE) or one or two (A level) and build up slowly.
Revision plans that have “do maths” or “revise French” are ineffective and will waste your time when you get to it.
Split up the time available, allocate it to each subject with weighting towards particular areas you’re finding more difficult and then create clear actions for yourself in each revision block. For example, there are 40 hours in February half term. I will give four hours each to my 10 subjects. I revise most effectively between 9am-1pm and 4-6pm. So a good plan for the day might be:
Timetable
9-10.45: Complete non calc maths paper and mark
10.45-11: Break
11-12: Write out three key events from the Battle of the Somme
12-1: Create presentation on ionic bonding and present to a family member
4-5: Return to Battle of the Somme events, write out again without notes and mark
5-6: Write out key elements of ionic bonding presentation without notes and answer three practice questions with notes
Finish for the day
Make it active
For almost everyone, effective revision isn’t just reading through notes. Make it active – write things out, present to family or friends, create cool mind maps or flashcards. You could use Quizlet, which creates interactive cards and learning materials. This is more effort in the short term but it’s significantly more effective. Don’t stay sat down either, our brain is proven to be most active when our body is too. Remember: there are no rules about how to revise, and it shouldn’t be boring.
Beware of past papers!
Past papers are your friend. But don’t introduce them too early. You will definitely get sick of them and they can’t just be used as a plaster for missing knowledge or gaps in understanding. Try to interweave them with other revision strategies. In the main bulk phase of revision, one per day is more than enough. We don’t recommend getting into past papers until Easter at the earliest.
Online websites like Revision World and Physics and Maths Tutor have plenty of suitable practice papers and tests. It’s also definitely worth checking out BBC Bitesize for useful revision information and tips, as well as StudentRoom’s Get Revising.
The exam board websites will also contain lots of useful information particularly with sample model answers, practice questions, assessment materials and mark schemes.
AQA - Find past papers and mark schemes
CCEA - Past Papers & Mark Schemes
EdExcel - Past papers
Edugas - Past Papers
OCR - Find past papers and mark schemes
WJEC/CBAC - Question Bank
Useful subject-specific website
English - York Notes
Physics - A Level Physics
Maths- Revision Maths
Biology - A-Level Biology
Chemistry - ChemGuide (don’t be put off by the old fashioned website!)
History - The History Learning Site
Badger your teachers
When you get back from Easter, keep them busy! They will always ask for papers and mock questions you may have done which can be marked and handed back. If they don’t have time they will tell you, but at Oppidan we always say it’s better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. This is free practice and essentially a consequence-free environment in which to make mistakes and try things out in the weeks and months leading up to the real thing.
Make sure you don’t just look at the mark and celebrate (or not). Make sure you look carefully at what you’ve done well and what you could have done differently. Otherwise, that past paper has given you nothing! The mark on the front is irrelevant until August. Take your focus away from the outcome in the revision phase and onto the content / process.
Enjoy your time off
Rest is just as important as work. Enjoy your breaks, evenings and days off guilt-free by making sure that when you’re working, you’re working and when you’re relaxing, you’re relaxing! It sounds obvious but half scrolling Snapchat, half making notes is going to lead to burnout a lot quicker and be much less effective.
It’s important to get outside: do sport, play an instrument, visit places, chat with family, chat with your mates, watch TV, do anything that’s not revision.
Four good hours of revision a day is so much more valuable than 8 hours of ‘kinda working/kinda scrolling Tiktok’. As the suggested plan outlines, you want to revise in short bursts and not to drag it out. That's what leads to fatigue.
Exams – the process itself
Doing the exams is a marathon not a sprint. You want to be able to give everything in each one and not experience fluctuations in your energy, mood, attitude and alertness. This is a lot easier said than done!
Some key tips for the exam period:
Exams are often two to three hours. They’re not decided either way in the first five minutes. If you get into the exam and the first five minutes is bad (you can’t see questions you can answer, the topic you wanted didn’t come up etc..), that doesn’t mean the exam will go badly. Unfortunately, success in exams is just as contingent on performance on the day as it is revision and long-term work. Do your best to stay calm and remember that you can always retrieve a bad start.
Have a good stock of pens and pencils ready to go before the exams start. Make sure you like the weight and feel of the pen (you’d be surprised!) that you use. It will have a clear impact on your handwriting, which is important.
Get up at the same time each day and eat roughly the same things to ensure you have a consistent bank of energy.
Exercise every day in some form (no matter if you’ve got an exam or not).
Once you’ve finished your exam, go and get something to eat, call somebody to debrief and then move on. Don’t share your experience with every person in the year or ask them if they “got B for question 3 “or “wrote two sides or five sides”.
Once you’ve finished an exam, it can be therapeutic to move your folders for that exam into another room. That way your desk clears gradually, and you can physically see the achievement of getting through the process.
It's so obvious but you can’t get more than full marks on any exam. Don't try to let previous exams influence future ones and treat each opportunity on its merits. So, one way of thinking might be: “I did badly in biology, so I’ve got to try extra hard in chemistry”, but a different way to think might be: “English was difficult, and it didn’t go the way I hoped. I’m going to leave it behind me and approach history with the same energy/effort as any other exam.”
Finally, ensure you’ve got something nice planned after the exams! It’s great to have a nice plan to look forward to. As the folders on the desk diminish, that date gets closer and closer.