Results Are Feedback. What You Do With Them Is What Matters.
This week’s reflections Thursday 13th August. Results are released from 8am, your UCAS Hub updates from around the same time and Clearing choices can be added from 1pm. Whatever is in the envelope, the grade is information about how a set of papers went in a handful of exams in May and June. That is […]
When It’s Not Going In, Get Up and Go for a Walk
This week’s reflections There’s a particular kind of stuck that every student knows. You’ve been at the desk for an hour, the page isn’t going in, you’ve read the same paragraph three times and none of it has stayed and the harder you push the worse it gets. The instinct in that moment is almost […]
If It Worked Last Year, Keep It. If It Didn’t, This Is the Week to Change It.
This week’s reflections A familiar story students tell themselves over the summer is that Year 13 will be the year it all comes together and that whatever went slightly wrong last year will sort itself out once things get serious. It’s a nice thought and it almost never happens, because September doesn’t hand you a […]
Whose A Level Is It Anyway? Why the Separation of Tasks Matters
This week’s reflections A parent tells me they were up until midnight worrying about their son’s Chemistry mock. The son slept fine. He knew the mock had gone badly, shrugged it off and went to bed. The parent carried it for both of them. I hear a version of this every week and the thing […]
Why Two Students Revise for the Same Six Hours and Get Different Grades
This week’s reflections Two students sit down on a Sunday and both do six hours of Biology. Both work hard, both finish tired and both feel like they have earned the rest of the evening off. One of them is heading for a C and the other is heading for an A*. Nothing about the […]
Starting A Levels: What Every Year 12 Student Needs to Know
This week’s reflections GCSEs are done. Whatever they were: a slog, a breeze, better or worse than you hoped; they’re behind you now and A Levels are a different game entirely. Fewer subjects, far more depth and a lot more resting on how you work rather than how much you can cram the night before. […]
The Summer After Year 12: How to Make Year 13 Easier
This week’s reflections Year 12 is nearly done, mocks completed and the long stretch of summer is ahead of you. For most students it feels like a finish line, with no more lessons to think about. A complete break is exactly what some of you need first, although there’s a real trap in treating the […]
A Level Biology – You don’t know your grade yet. Stop trying to calculate it.
For biology students, by the time you read this, Paper 2 will be over. One more to go! On my mind this week A surprising thing about expecting everyone to be happy once the exams are over, is that the anxiety doesn’t disappear when the exam finishes. Sometimes it gets worse. Whilst you’re revising, there […]
A Level Biology Revision: Why It’s Time to Move On from Paper 1
This week’s reflections The first Biology paper is done. For some, it felt good. For others, it didn’t. Most students seem to have spent the week somewhere in between… remembering the questions they answered well, whilst becoming increasingly convinced they got everything else wrong. A quick word about the banana question on the AQA paper. […]
A Level Biology Revision: The Final Days Before Paper 1
Biology paper 1 is on Thursday! This week’s reflections For many of you, the countdown has become very real. This time next week, Paper 1 will already be over. The months of lessons, revision plans, flashcards, past papers and late-night worrying will have led to a single morning in a sports hall somewhere. Instead of, […]