3 months out
12-week revision plan
The full plan: learn, then practise, then rehearse under exam conditions.
Short on time6-week revision plan
A catch-up plan that spends your time where the marks are.
Exam weekThe final week
What to do, and what to stop doing, in the last seven days.
Three rules every plan follows
- Questions beat notes. Re-reading feels productive but tests nothing. Answering a question and checking it against a mark scheme shows you exactly what you can and cannot do.
- Weak topics first. An hour on a topic you already know earns almost nothing. An hour on one you keep getting wrong can be worth several marks.
- Spread it out. Coming back to a topic after a few days, then again after a week, makes it stick far better than one long session.
Which revision plan should you use?
- Three months or more to go: the 12-week plan. It covers every topic properly, then moves on to timed papers.
- Around six weeks: the 6-week plan. It finds the five topics per subject costing you the most marks and fixes those first.
- Exam week: the final-week checklist: what to do, what to stop, the night before and on the day.
- Several subjects with different exam dates: the revision planner builds a day-by-day timetable from your own dates.
What a good revision session looks like
About 45 minutes on one topic. A few minutes looking over your notes, most of the time answering questions without them, then marking your answers against a mark scheme and writing down what you got wrong. End with a short break away from your screen. Two or three of these a day, done properly, beat a whole day of re-reading.
Know what is on your papers first
Revision goes further when you know exactly which papers you sit, how long they are and which topics they cover. Start with your subject guide: