How To Do Well In Your GCSE Exams: The Basics

Credit: Tallis Photography

The purpose of this blog post is to give you a sense of the skills you’ll need to work on to achieve high grades in the new GCSE. I’ve kept the steps as concise as possible so you can quickly give this a scan whenever you’re in need of some direction during your own GCSE preparation. I know I would have found something like this useful back in the day! 

Within, I lay out the key changes between the old and the new GCSEs. I then provide 10 areas where the difference between a low grade and a high grade will be decided. This is based on 5 years of working with GCSE level students across the UK. Year-in year-out the students who effectively manage to do the things I list below end up achieving the highest grades. Whatever your level, or what you’re predicted, this guide is designed to help you get some momentum going with your GCSE revision. 

Let’s get into it! 👍

What’s the difference between the old and new GCSE? 

Here’s the Government Fact Sheet on the new GCSE reform made in 2015. It’s a bit wordy. So I’ve summarised the three key take aways below: 

• They’ve become harder 

• They’re almost entirely exam focussed 

• There’s less opportunity to resit 

Nice! 😉

I know this might seem a little daunting at first. But let’s take a look at what steps you can take to wrestle this new GCSE format under control.

Become awesome at taking exams

The new GCSE is almost entirely exam based. That’s a fact. Therefore, the first and most important step to GCSE success is believing that going through the process of taking exams will be useful to you in the future. 

Here are three things I have come to know about exams: 

• They’re a learned skill - check out this video showing my experience transitioning from a distracted, mischievous, underperforming student to one who figured out how to prepare for and perform well in exams. Anyone can improve, no matter where you start from. 

• The ability to successfully pass exams is needed in later life. I’m in my mid twenties and I’ve had many different types of jobs ranging from a litter picker to an account executive at a global advertising agency. I have friends who work in industries such as Finance, Law, Health, Commerce, Construction and Governance. Many of these industries require you to acquire further exam qualifications after you’ve left University. I had no clue about this! Exams aren’t just something you need for formal education, they’re something you need in life. It’s worth learning a system to pass them now and reaping the benefits in the future. 

• They build transferable skills for any workplace. Even if you don’t want to choose any of the careers listed above. If you want to become anything ranging from an artist to a weightlifting champion! Exams help you develop basic skills which come in handy for many areas of life. They help you to develop strong routines, manage your time, organise your thoughts and stay calm in pressurised situations. 

Plan effectively for the year 

There are some really important things you need to do depending on what stage you’re at in the GCSE process: 

• Figure out your strengths and weaknesses subject by subject

• Know when you are prioritising the following activities: 

  • Paying attention in class, taking great notes, understanding everything and gathering all the information you need to revise

  • Revising the key topics and fundamentals of each subject syllabus 

  • Revising the specific details which will push you into the top grand bands (8 and 9)

• Want to watch a video which will help you through this exercise? Check out this IGTV video called: When To Start Revising For GCSE? 

Pay Attention in Class

If you watched the video above about my experience of school you can see that I wasn’t the most focussed student in class. The teachers even called me out on it!
So, why you need to pay attention in class?

These GCSE exams are more difficult and complex than previously. Paying attention in class and understanding all the information as you go through year 10 and 11 is more important than ever before. You can’t coast. Instead, consistency is the key to success. 

Make sure you understand what the teacher is teaching and ask the right questions in class. Consistency is tough to achieve. But if you can work on paying proper attention every day, you’ll thank yourself on results day. 

Create a winning environment 

In the previous step the importance of consistency was mentioned. In order to generate this consistency you need to make sure the environment around you allows you to be consistent. For example, a constantly messy workspace doesn’t provide a platform on which you can consistently get work done. There are few things you need to do in order to create a winning environment: 

• An organised room. Know where your stuff is for school. If you forget your equipment you’ll needlessly set yourself further behind on your studies.

• Your desk should be totally clear with nothing on it. When you revise bring what you need to your desk. 

• Make your bed. This is a saying I’ve enjoyed from this graduation speech video. It’s the first task of the day successfully done and, even if the day doesn’t go to plan, you can come home and get a good nights sleep to be ready to make an improvement on the next one. 

Use Effective Revision Technique 

It’s not going to be the students who revise the longest or make the prettiest notes for Instagram who will achieve the top GCSE grades. The highest performers will use effective and efficient revision technique. 

The of the best revision techniques I recommend you use are: 

• Active recall 

• Spaced Repetition

Jump to 2 mins 28 secs in this video for a more detailed explanation of what they are and how they can be applied. 

Build an awesome daily routine

‘The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine’ 

Building a solid routine for the day-to-day at school and during revision season is crucial. Knowing what you need to do each day to make the day a success is important because it generates a feeling of growth and momentum. As long as we think and feel like we’re moving forward we tend to stay positive and are more likely to achieve our goals. Doing the little things everyday which add up and accumulate to make a big difference. 

Your routine should be a balance of maintaining the tools you need to get the work done. These are, your body and your mind. Secondly, it should allocate specific time towards getting the work/revision done. 

Three things you should factor into your daily routine:

• Physical - at least 20 minutes of intense exercise a day or every other day 

• Mental - a screen free time (10 minutes to 1 hour in length) when you don’t look at your phone or think about school. 

• The work/revision - be specific with when sessions for tasks start and end, focus on task completion over ‘time worked for’. 

Prepare for exams as if you were a professional athlete 

The new GCSE tests your ability to understand and recall information learned over an extended period of time. We’ve come up with some ideas to tackle this truth in the previous sections. 

But it’s also about your ability to perform at a consistently high level for shorter periods of time. For example, the period of exam season and the exams themselves. I see exam season just like a sports season. It’s a series of games or matches, some more challenging than others, what matters is how you prepare and perform throughout the whole season to finish as near to the top of the table as possible. 

It makes sense that you should take the same approach as professional athletes in controlling all other variables in addition to the training programme you’ve undertaken to make sure you’re in top condition for game day. You should be paying close attention to and prioritising the following factors: 

• Sleep - if you’re tired in the middle of the day, that’s a sign you need to reconsider the quantity and quality of your sleep. Find an amount that’s right for you. 

• Diet - at a basic level everyone knows what is and what isn’t good for their body. Stick to the complex carbohydrates, healthy fats and protein rich sources of food. Bolster this with vitamins and minerals and you’ll be fully fit throughout exam season. Cut down on sugar. 

• Water intake - we’re practically made of water! Make sure you stay hydrated. Science has proven both our physical and mental performance drops off when dehydrated. It’s an easy factor to control when you have running water, control it! 

• Exercise routine - the combined effect exercise has on stress relief and keeping your body physically healthy is huge. Get outside every day. Take some deep breaths and raise your heart rate a little with some exercise.

Have a pre, during and post exam routine

Just as you should create a daily routine. You need to create an exam routine to ensure a similar trend of consistent progress and high performance.

Exam stress and anxiety exists because, by the very nature of an exam, we’re about to face something unpredictable which we fear might go badly. Furthermore, we can’t control what’s on the exam, we can only control our reaction to it.

Being absolutely clear on what you do before, during and after an exam will help to settle your nerves and get you thinking clearly under pressure. An exam routine should outline specific actions you take to eliminate exam stress and provide a reassuring sense of control. 

Have a technique for every exam 

There are many different types of exams. From multiple choice to essay-based exams, you must know your approach for each. 

• How many times do you read the question to ensure you fully understand it? 

• In what order do you answer the questions? 

• Where are the most marks to be won? 

• Where (what topics) do you feel most confident scoring the most marks? 

• How much time do you leave to check through your answers?

• How long do you spend planning your essays?

Knowing how to apply your knowledge within the context of each exam is key. Make sure you decide your approach to each of the subjects you’re going to be examined on. 

BONUS TIP: the way you use your smartphone is one of the key factors to exam success 

The smartphone can either be a massive help or huge hindrance to the achievement of good GCSE results. With this device, all of the world’s information is in the palm of your hand and at your disposal. This is both a blessing and a curse depending on how you use the device on a daily basis. Yes, it has all the answers to help you on your way, but it also has an eternity of distraction and irrelevant information ready for you. 

I’m a huge fan of the smartphone. It has made our lives easier and more convenient than ever before. We just need to make sure we’re using the phone rather than it using us! Be conscious of how you use your own smartphone and how you can turn it into your biggest exam supporter! 

Here are 7 ways to become less distracted by your smartphone. 

Conclusion

The new GCSE is going to be challenging. But I’d encourage you to see the positives here. You’re going to learn a lot about yourself through this process. 

I’d also ask you to put exams into context. They do not determine who you are and what you will become. They are just an opportunity for you to prove you have a type of intelligence which much of society and the job market values. But just because it’s valued doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that’s valued. Here’s a good video on exam stress which I feel puts everything into context nicely. 

Think back to the skills you learn from the process of taking exams mentioned in the introduction to this eBook. Focus on building those and you will come away with something valuable to apply to anything you become passionate about in the future.

GCSE Combined (Trilogy) Science - What I Did To Get Two 9s

My Background

I’ve never found science or maths easy, or particularly enjoyable. In fact, if you told me a year ago I would get a 9 9 in science, I wouldn’t have believed it! I used to get bored easily in chemistry lessons, frustrated in physics and lose concentration in biology. After all, I knew I certainly wouldn’t be doing anything science related beyond GCSE. Science just seemed like learning the content over and over and then writing it onto an exam paper. Luckily, this became a benefit when I started revising (even though it was slightly boring to start with) and it ended up helping me get a good grade. With the right technique, effort and concentration, science revision became much easier. Once I got the hang of revising for science in the right way, my grades started to improve - and science didn’t seem as daunting as before. 

The Positives

The good thing about science is how easy it is to organise and separate for revision because of the clear specification. This means that you can easily make a revision timetable which will fit around any extra activities during the weeks leading up to exams. Science is easy to break down into chunks, as each one has different sections and subsections which you can slot into a revision timetable to manage your time effectively. As somebody who likes the learn visually, I used a lot of colours in my notes and diagrams in the flashcards to help me remember everything. I found physics and chemistry require some more application and a bit more concentration to understand the concepts.

Even though biology is the most content heavy science, I found it the easiest, as long as you manage your time well to fit in revision. The hardest part is just sitting down and learning what you need to know. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut to this - however the way in which you learn can help speed things up a bit. For example, knowing which revision methods work best for you, and regularly testing yourself. 

My chemistry notes: I used the CGP revision guide and my own notes from lessons to condense the information onto mindmaps and flashcards to revise from.

How I Revised

Especially for science, I found practice papers and questions throughout the year was the most beneficial way to revise. After each topic, I reviewed the content using my own notes/flashcards (sometimes including diagrams) or Seneca Learning (a resource which not only helps you memorise content quickly, but helps you retain information for a long time). I applied this to practice questions, sometimes trying to stick to one mark a minute as I struggled with timing. These are extremely helpful for sciences especially because they:

• consolidate the knowledge you’ve already learnt

• help practise exam technique

• identify which areas you need to work more on

The great thing with practice papers in science is the mark scheme. By the time exam season came around, mark schemes were a saviour. 

Most of the questions in the exam papers for science are repeated in a different way but usually require a specific answer. Especially for chemistry, the terminology and wording you use is crucial. For example, mixing up ions and atoms may alter the whole question, the mark schemes help you to learn technical scientific vocabulary. That’s why it’s important, when looking back over past papers, that you learn what you didn’t get right the first time, go back to your lesson notes if needed or ask a teacher to help you understand. This way, you’ll hopefully remember the mistake you made and are less likely to make it again. 

The practice papers I found most useful were from the CGP revision guide/workbook, AQA practice papers (these are good practice to do a whole paper after covering the majority of the specification) and Maths Made Easy (great for quickly recapping a topic). Making sure you try to understand the topic when it’s being taught makes it much easier when you are revising for exams as there isn’t as much time to spend on small parts of the specification. However, there were some topics I just never understood (for example, specific latent heat and specific heat capacity in physics). In this case, I looked at the mark scheme for some support and tried to understand what answers the exam board expected to see if I was short on time.

Required practicals are also a huge part of the AQA science specification, and it’s common to get a long written question on them. It’s hard to remember an experiment from a previous lesson, never mind an experiment from a lesson years ago. I found it important to go back over each one when revising. Make sure you know: 

• the method of each experiment

• formulas related to it

• Adaptations

• variables (independent, dependent, control)

• equipment

It took me a long time to memorise each of the methods for every single experiment, but learning the key parts to it came in handy, especially for the high marked questions.

Some of my notes for the required practicals

Learning formulas, units and symbols off by heart is also extremely important in science. Try using Quizlet to type up the formulas you get given during lessons, asking the teachers which ones you have to learn and which you have to recognise. Maths skills are also very important, which is bound to come up in every paper you do,  so make sure you know how to convert units, and always show your working out!

I used Quizlet to help me learn formulas and equations

Generally, I found physics the hardest, yet by the end of year 11, after I spent some time familiarising myself with the concepts, it got much easier. Although, it did take quite a bit of reading notes and asking questions to understand). Sometimes watching videos helped, such as from Free Science Lessons and Primrose Kitten (her website also has great resources and practice papers).

On the run up to exam season, I split the trilogy science specification into chunks of biology, chemistry and physics. Within this, I broke it down into different papers, topics and key components inside the topics. Then I made sure to revise a different topic every few days. To make sure I covered the specification in as much detail as I could, I carried out the following process : 

• recapped the content

• used practice questions 

• corrected my mistakes using the mark scheme. 

• if necessary, I reviewed the required practical, sometimes visualising the experiment helped me to remember it more clearly

The Exams

For trilogy science, there are six papers in total (two for each science), which seems like lots of exams for somebody who doesn’t particularly enjoy science! Luckily, even if you feel like the other exams didn’t go too well, there are more opportunities to improve. For example, I found my first paper (biology paper 1) didn’t go as well as I expected. The long question at the end - a six marker- combined multiple topics, which was a lot to get through, making timing an issue (especially as I only noticed the question with five minutes left)! Luckily, the GCSE tweets afterwards told me I wasn’t alone. What was the good thing about that being the first paper? I knew that for the next five science exams, I would watch my timing. Sometimes, it can be helpful to do the larger questions first and then answer the rest. Another benefit of doing two exams in each science means you could vaguely predict what has a high chance of coming up in the next paper. For example, if chemistry paper 1 had no required practicals, or lots of maths and equations/ formulas, it is highly likely that a required practical will come up in paper two, and you may need to focus revision on maths questions. This is extremely helpful during exam season when you’re pushed for time and it’s hard to revise with so much detail.

Remember, whether you enjoy science or not, you can still get a good grade. Make sure to revise in the right way for you, leaving enough time for recap crucial topics likely to come up and be worth a lot of marks. Once you have found a technique that helps you retain all the scientific knowledge you need to know, and practise applying it to questions, you’ll be surprised with how much easier science becomes!

Some biology notes, this includes a mindmap of key parts from the specification, I made this to make sure I had covered everything. I also used flashcards with diagrams to help with my memory. I also tested myself on recalling a required practical equipment diagram for microscopy (flashcard) as well as the information for topic 1 (mindmap).