The A-Level Club

When It’s Not Going In, Get Up and Go for a Walk

richard — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 11:49:44 +0000

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 always to stay put and try harder, because getting up feels like giving in and giving in feels like laziness.

It isn’t laziness and staying put isn’t working. When your head has gone like that, more time at the desk just turns into more time being stuck and you end up tired and frustrated with nothing to show for it, which then makes the whole thing feel worse the next time you sit down.

The fix is much simpler than it sounds and it’s this. Get up and go for a walk. Twenty minutes, no phone in your hand, no podcast if you can manage it, just out and moving. You come back with a clearer head and the thing that wouldn’t go in an hour ago often goes in first time.

On my mind this week

I think students underrate walking because it doesn’t feel like work and anything that doesn’t feel like work feels like it can’t be helping. However, the walk is doing something real. Sitting still and staring at a page that won’t stick keeps you locked in the exact state that’s stopping you, whereas moving and looking at something other than your notes lets your head settle and a settled head takes things in far better than a tired frustrated one ever will.

There’s also the plain matter of your body over a long stretch of study. A summer or a revision run where you barely move, barely go outside and sit hunched over a desk for hours is hard on you and it shows up as worse sleep, lower mood and less patience with the work, all of which feed straight back into how well you learn. You don’t need a training plan or a gym membership for any of this. A daily walk on its own does a surprising amount and if you already do a sport or go to the gym, protect that time through the busy weeks rather than dropping it because you think you can’t spare it. You learn better across a week where you’ve moved than one where you haven’t.

So the walk isn’t time taken away from studying. It’s part of how the studying works and the students who treat a clear head and a bit of daily movement as basic maintenance rather than a luxury tend to get more out of the hours they do sit down for.

Study tip

When a topic won’t go in and you can feel yourself getting nowhere, stop.

Put the work down mid-topic, you’ll pick it straight back up. Go outside and walk for twenty minutes, no phone in your hand. Don’t try to think about the topic while you walk, let it sit. Come back and read the same page again before you decide you don’t understand it.

Do this the moment you notice you’ve stopped taking things in, not an hour later. The walk works best as the thing you do instead of the frustrated hour, rather than the thing you do to recover from it.

For parents

If you see your child stuck at their desk for hours looking increasingly fed up, it’s worth gently sending them out for a walk and it’s worth doing it without making it sound like a comment on their work.

The reason this can help coming from you is that students often feel they’re not allowed to stop, that getting up from the desk is slacking and that the only virtuous thing is to stay there however badly it’s going. A parent who treats a walk as a normal and sensible part of a working day, rather than as time off that has to be earned, gives them permission to do the thing that actually helps. Going out for some air together is even better, because it’s time with them that asks nothing of either of you and tends to be when they’ll actually talk.

More broadly, the students who cope best through a long stretch of study are usually the ones still doing the ordinary things that keep a person well, getting outside, moving, sleeping properly and seeing people. None of that competes with the work. It’s what makes the work sustainable and protecting it is one of the more useful things you can do from the sidelines.

Quote of the week

“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.”

If It Worked Last Year, Keep It. If It Didn’t, This Is the Week to Change It.

richard — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:38:47 +0000

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 new way of working. You bring last year’s habits with you and you carry on doing what you already know how to do.

So it’s worth being honest with yourself about how Year 12 actually went. Not the effort, which was probably fine, but the result. Look at your end of year exam. Unless you got full marks on it, something about how you learnt this year left marks on the table. If you go into September doing exactly what you did last year you’ll get exactly what you got last year, only against harder content.

That isn’t a telling-off. It’s the most useful thing summer offers, which is a bit of distance and enough time to change one thing before it matters.

On my mind this week

The trap is that hard work feels like a plan. If you worked hard in Year 12 and it didn’t quite come off, the obvious response is to promise yourself you’ll work harder in Year 13. That’s the response that keeps students exactly where they are. More hours doing the thing that didn’t work only gets you more of what didn’t work. The students who move up a grade tend to change what they do, not simply how much of it.

So look back at your end of year exam properly. Where did you actually lose the marks? Was it whole topics you never really understood, or was it that you knew the material and couldn’t produce it under time, or was it the long questions where you knew roughly the right thing and didn’t say it in the way the mark scheme wanted? Those are three completely different problems and they have three completely different fixes… and none of them is “revise more.”

The reason this matters now rather than in September is that Year 13 assumes Year 12 is solid and moves at full pace from the first week. There is no settling-in period built in for you to fix your method whilst also learning the hardest content of the course. The habits you arrive with are the habits you’ll sit the exam with, unless you use these few weeks, whilst there’s no pressure on you at all, to change one of them deliberately.

Study tip

Get your end of Year 12 exam out, the actual paper, with the marks on it.

Go through it question by question and mark each lost mark as one of three things: didn’t know it, knew it but ran out of time, or knew it but didn’t answer the way the mark scheme wanted. Add up which of the three cost you the most. That category is your summer project, not the whole paper. If it’s the first, go back to those topics and understand them from the textbook. If it’s the second, try answering to time with everything closed. If it’s the third, answer questions and mark yourself hard against the real mark scheme.

Most students never look at a paper again once it’s handed back, which is the one document that tells you precisely what happened. It’s worth an hour of your summer more than almost anything else you could do.

For parents

If your child got their end of year results back and they were disappointing, the most natural thing in the world is to want them to work more next year, but it’s usually the wrong instinct.

A child who worked hard and was let down by their results doesn’t need to be told to try harder, because they already did try and hearing that it wasn’t enough tends to sound like, “you’re not good enough” rather than as useful advice. What helps far more is a conversation about what specifically went wrong, treated as a problem to solve rather than a failing to correct. The question isn’t “will you work harder next year?” it’s “what do you think cost you the marks, and what would you do differently?”

That’s a genuinely different conversation and it puts them in charge of the answer, which is where they need to be. Your job here isn’t to diagnose it for them or to build them a plan. It’s to believe that they can work it out and to give them the space to do it, because a child who has worked out their own weak spot will fix it with far more energy than one who’s been handed a fix by someone else.

Quote of the week

“The important thing is not what one is born with, but what use one makes of that equipment.”

Whose A Level Is It Anyway? Why the Separation of Tasks Matters

richard — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 12:43:38 +0000

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 that gets me is not the worry itself. It is who is doing the worrying. The person with the most at stake is often the calmest in the house, while everyone around them lies awake. Somewhere along the way the stress of it all got picked up by the wrong person.

Adler had a phrase for untangling this, the separation of tasks, and it is one of the most quietly freeing ideas I know of. The question it asks is simple. Whose task is this, actually? Once you can answer that honestly, a great deal of the weight that families carry through exam season turns out not to be theirs to carry at all.

On my mind this week

The way to tell whose task something is comes down to one question. Who ultimately lives with the consequence? Whoever that is owns the task.

The revision is the student’s task, because the student is the one who sits the exam. The result is the student’s task, because the student is the one who carries the grade into whatever comes next. This sounds like pressure and it is the opposite of pressure. If the result is genuinely the student’s task, then nobody else gets a say in how they work, nobody else gets to sit in their chair and nobody else’s anxiety gets to set up shop in their head. Ownership and freedom are the same thing here.

The trouble starts when tasks get mixed up. A student who revises to stop a parent worrying is now carrying two loads, their own work and their parent’s feelings…and doing neither of them well. A parent who treats the grade as their task ends up managing, chasing and reminding…and the student just hands the whole thing over because someone else is clearly holding it. The more you carry of someone else’s task, the less they carry of it themselves. That is not a personality flaw in the student. It is just what happens when a task has two owners.

None of this means not caring. Separation of tasks is often misread as coldness, as walking away and leaving someone to sink. It is nothing of the kind. It means being clear about where your task ends and someone else’s begins, so that the help you give is help and not control.

Study tip

Draw a line down the middle of a page. On the left, write everything about your A Levels that is genuinely your task, the things only you can do. Revising, turning up, asking when you are stuck, choosing how you spend a Sunday. On the right, write down the things you have been carrying that are actually someone else’s task. Your mum’s worry. Your teacher’s disappointment. Whether a friend thinks you are working hard enough.

Now really look at the right hand column, because that is the weight you have been revising underneath without noticing. None of it is yours to fix. Your mum owns her worry and she can handle it. Your teacher owns their reaction and they will be fine. Put that column down and go back to the left hand one, which is the only part that matters.

For parents

The hardest place to apply this is the one that matters most, which is your own child.

When you treat the grade as your task, everything that follows feels like love. The reminders, the checking, the buying of the revision guides, the asking how it is going for the third time that day. It comes from the best possible place. The difficulty is what it teaches, because a child whose parent owns the outcome learns that they do not have to…and the responsibility slides across the table to the person willing to hold it.

Separation of tasks asks something genuinely uncomfortable of a parent, which is to let the grade belong to your child. Your task is real and it is not small. It is to provide the conditions, the calm house, the food, the belief that they are capable, the door that is open when they choose to walk through it. Their task is to do the work. When those two get confused, you end up doing your task and half of theirs…and they end up doing neither.

The test I would offer is this. When a grade disappoints, notice who is more upset. If it is consistently you, the task has drifted to the wrong side of the table. Hand it back, not with a speech but by asking what they are going to do about it and then trusting the answer. A child who owns their result has somewhere to go. A child whose parent owns it has no reason to move.

Quote of the week

“It is not that we are unable to change. It is that we lack the courage to take the first step.”

Why Two Students Revise for the Same Six Hours and Get Different Grades

richard — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 08:51:33 +0000

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 six hours explains that. It isn’t effort and it isn’t motivation and it certainly isn’t how clever either of them is. The hours were the same. What went on inside them wasn’t.

This is the thing that almost nobody says out loud at A Level, which is that revision isn’t a quantity at all, it’s a method, and two students can spend exactly the same time on exactly the same topic and come away with completely different amounts of learning to show for it. So the question worth asking at the end of a Sunday isn’t how long you revised, it’s what you actually did with the time.

On my mind this week

The student heading for a C spends the six hours re-reading notes, highlighting, watching a YouTube video and copying a diagram out neatly…and all of it feels like it’s going in. That feeling is the trap, because the ease you get from looking at something familiar is not the same thing as being able to produce it from nothing in a silent hall in June…and only one of those is being tested.

The student heading for an A* closes the book and tries to write it out from memory, gets it wrong, checks, tries again and then does exam questions on a topic they haven’t looked at for three weeks precisely because they haven’t looked at it for three weeks. It feels far worse whilst you’re doing it. That’s rather the point.

Then there’s the half of this that I only see when I’m marking. Most of the marks that get lost are not lost because the student didn’t know the content. They’re lost because the student knew it perfectly well and didn’t say it in the way the mark scheme asks for. The answer was nearly there and it missed the key word, or it described something when the question asked for an explanation, or it gave three separate points when what was needed was a comparison.

Reading your notes again will not fix any of that, because your notes are not a mark scheme…and the only way to find out how the exam wants an answer written is to write answers and mark them against it. One of these students has been doing that all year. The other has been learning the content and hoping the marks follow.

Study tip

Take a topic you’re pretty sure you already know.

Find an exam question on it, set a timer for the number of marks and answer it in full. Everything closed until the timer stops…and that includes the mark scheme.

Then mark yourself against the real mark scheme rather than against your notes.

Anything you missed, go back to the textbook and work out why that answer is right. This is important.

Only then write the phrase down word for word.
Come back to the topic in a fortnight with a different question.

If you glance at the mark scheme whilst you’re still writing, you’re just copying… and you’ll walk away thinking you knew it when you didn’t. The other shortcut is to skip the understanding altogether and just learn the mark schemes off by heart, which falls apart in the exam because the question is never the one you rehearsed and a phrase you’ve memorised can’t be applied to a context you’ve never seen.

For parents

There’s a kind of support that feels like the most loving thing available and makes it all harder…and it’s worth naming because most of us have done it.

“You’re so clever.”
“You’ve always been the smart one.”

The difficulty is that praise like that ties your child’s worth to something fixed, so when a topic gets genuinely hard or a mock comes back badly, the explanation available to them isn’t that their method needs changing, it’s that perhaps they were never that clever after all. That’s a frightening thing to think about and the safest way to avoid thinking it is to stop putting yourself in situations that might prove it, which is why very able children sometimes go quiet at precisely the time the work starts asking something real of them.

Adler separated praise from encouragement…and the distinction is useful here. Praise comes down from above as a verdict on the person, whilst encouragement sits alongside them and comments on what they did. One builds a child who needs your approval to keep going and the other builds a child who can keep going without it.

So the change is small and it’s to talk about the method rather than the person. Not “you’re so clever” but “you tested yourself instead of just reading it and that’s why it stayed in.” Not “you’re brilliant at this” but “you found the topic you didn’t understand and you did something about it.” And when a grade disappoints, hold off on the rescue and ask what they’ll do differently, then trust the answer they give you. A child who believes their grade comes from their method has somewhere to go next. A child who believes it comes from their brain has nowhere at all.

Quote of the week

“No matter what has occurred in your life up to now, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on.”

Starting A Levels: What Every Year 12 Student Needs to Know

richard — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 10:50:11 +0000

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.

That’s the gap The A Level Club is built to fill. We teach Biology, Chemistry and Politics in structured group courses, each led by a specialist who has examined the exact papers you’ll sit. Around that sits a team of mentors who help with everything the textbook doesn’t: how you revise, how you plan, how you keep going when the novelty wears off. It’s a step up from a single tutor for a single subject and that’s the point. A Levels ask more of you, so we’ve built something that gives more back.

The name says the rest. It’s a club – something you belong to and take part in, not a service you sit back and receive. The students who thrive here run their own learning and let us build the structure around them.

On my mind this week

The biggest shift from GCSE to A Level isn’t the content. It’s how much of the work is genuinely yours. It’s the system for learning that you put in place.

At GCSE, school carries a lot of it for you. Lessons cover everything, homework is set and chased and the pace is built for a wide range of students. With A levels, nobody hands you a revision timetable that works. Nobody notices straight away when a topic drifts past you. The students who do well aren’t the cleverest in the room. They’re the ones who take that responsibility on early instead of waiting to be pushed.

That sounds like more pressure. It’s actually less. Once you stop comparing yourself to everyone else and start asking what you need to do next, the work gets clearer and calmer. You’re no longer trying to keep up with an imaginary average. You’re just working on the thing in front of you. That mindset is the real difference between a stressful two years and a steady one and it’s what everything we do is built around.

Meet the mentors

Alongside subject teaching there’s a team of ten mentors. Teaching and mentoring are different jobs. A teacher gets you through the content. A mentor helps with the rest of it: how you revise, what you do with a tricky exam question, how you keep going in February.

On the Biology side: Harry (Durham) coaches exam technique, turning what you know into marks. Surabhi (Southampton) does Biology alongside Medicine admissions, so if medical school is the plan, she knows the route. Claudia (Durham) works on exam technique and application questions, with real strength on Edexcel. Deep (Oxford) runs our Power Hours and keeps students consistent and accountable. Carys (Bath) works on organisation, revision habits and essay technique. Will (Birmingham) makes Biology visual and straightforward, especially ecology and evolution. Ethan, a PhD researcher in Medical Science, helps students get the hardest concepts by understanding them properly rather than memorising them.

For Chemistry: Ishmam (Imperial), a medical student, helps students fix weak areas and join concepts up, while Lucy (Bath) focuses on calculations, revision planning and AQA exam technique.

For the maths behind it all: Jo (Durham, Physics) works through hard problems step by step, with the calculation skills Biology and Chemistry both rely on.

Between the teachers and the mentors, you get both halves of the job. The knowledge…and knowing what to do with it.

Study tip

Adler had an idea called separation of tasks: working out what’s actually yours to do and letting go of what isn’t. It’s useful over summer. You don’t need to know what anyone else is doing with theirs. You’re not behind. There’s no average to catch up with. There’s just the stuff you want to go into September feeling ready for.

So pick one thing. If you already know your subjects, read a little around the first topic. If you don’t, spend an hour on something you’re simply curious about in that direction. Nothing heavy. Just enough to start September warm rather than cold.

For parents

Welcome, especially if this is your first year with a child at A Level.

The main thing to know about how we work is that we treat your child as the person responsible for their own progress. That isn’t us stepping back. It’s the opposite. Real support builds someone’s ability to manage their own work rather than managing it for them. A child who owns their studies behaves very differently from one who’s being studied at.

In practice, the most useful thing you can offer at home is less pressure and more belief. Ask how it’s going and trust the answer. Let the mentors and teachers do the chasing, so you can do the encouraging. It’s a better split and it makes the whole house calmer.

Quote of the week

“No matter what has occurred in your life up to now, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on.”

A club is a fresh start and that quote is the version of it worth carrying: where you’ve been doesn’t decide where you go next. Welcome to The A Level Club.

If you haven’t been to one of my information sessions where I share the details of what’s happening between now and September, you can sign up here:

calendly.com/thealevelclub

Instagram: @thealevelclub
Facebook: The A-Level Club

The Summer After Year 12: How to Make Year 13 Easier

richard — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 whole summer as a write-off. Year 13 picks up the pace from week one and assumes everything from Year 12 is still fresh in your mind. Starting September feeling calm has very little to do with revising all summer. It comes from never letting the content go completely cold.

The content you learnt this year fades when you stop using it, not when you stop trying. Two months of no contact at all and a lot of it slips out of reach, so the first few weeks of Year 13 get spent recovering ground you already covered rather than moving forward.

A small amount of contact over the summer keeps everything within reach and twenty minutes here and there is enough to stop that fade setting in before you notice. The aim isn’t to revise all summer. It’s to make sure September doesn’t feel like starting from scratch.

On my mind this week

A lot of Year 12 students assume the gaps from this year will sort themselves out in Year 13. They usually don’t. The topics that confused you in May will still confuse you in September unless you actually do something about them and because Year 13 builds directly on Year 12 a shaky foundation only gets worse.

There’s a particular warning for those of you whose school has already started Year 13 content this term. That’s because it falls at the end of the year, when everyone has half switched off and so it rarely gets taken seriously. That content does not disappear over the summer. It comes back in September as assumed knowledge, taught at full pace…and anyone who drifted through it the first time finds themselves behind before the year has properly begun. Go back over it now, whilst it’s still recent, rather than meeting it cold in a few months.

The summer is the only point in two years where you have time and no pressure at the same time. Think about which topics genuinely scared you in exams, which ones you blagged your way through and which ones never quite clicked. Those are your summer project. Not all of it, just a few topics turned from amber to green whilst you actually have the space to do it.

Study tip

Choose one weak topic a week, that’s all.

Spend an hour getting it from confusing to clear
Make a single page of notes you’d actually trust in an exam
Do three or four past questions on it
Move on and don’t look back

One topic a week across the summer leaves most of your weak spots gone by September.

For Parents

The first few weeks of summer should be a proper rest. They have worked hard for it and they need it.

Later in the holiday is when a little structure helps. An hour or two set aside on a couple of days a week is plenty and it works far better as a normal part of the week than as a reaction to a bad report or a looming results day.

If you want to help with the content itself, ask them to explain a topic to you. They don’t need you to know anything. Talking it through out loud shows them quickly what they actually understand and where the gaps are and it tends to feel a lot less like revision than sitting alone with a textbook.

Quote of the week

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

A summer of doing nothing is still a choice…and not the one that pays off in September.

If you haven’t been to one of my information sessions where I share the details of what’s happening between now and September, you can sign up here:

calendly.com/thealevelclub

Instagram: @thealevelclub
Facebook: Biology by Clare

A Level Biology – You don’t know your grade yet. Stop trying to calculate it.

richard — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 is always something you can do.
Another topic. Another question. Another past paper.

Once the exam is over, the outcome is no longer in your hands and that uncertainty can feel uncomfortable.

Most students respond by trying to work out their grade.
The reality is that they don’t have enough information to do that accurately.

You don’t know exactly what you wrote.
You don’t know the mark scheme.
You don’t know the grade boundaries.

Yet many students spend weeks trying to calculate a result that cannot be calculated.

Things I’ve learned

Students are usually far worse at predicting their results than they think.

Every year, students who are convinced they have done badly, achieve fantastic grades.

Every year, students who leave feeling confident, discover they have dropped marks they didn’t realise they’d lost.

The fact is that you simply don’t know.

The only thing that matters now is whether there are still marks left to gain.

If Paper 3 is still ahead of you, focus on that.

If your exams are finished, focus on something else entirely.

Study tip

If you are sitting Paper 3 on 16th June, keep your world very small.

Don’t worry about results day.

Don’t worry about grade boundaries.

Don’t worry about what happened in previous papers.

Focus on the next exam and the next exam only.

You do not need to know your grade today.

You just need to earn as many marks as possible next week.

For Parents

One of the most common questions students get asked after exams is:

“How do you think it went?”

Most of the time, they genuinely don’t know.

A more useful question might be:

“What are you looking forward to now that it’s nearly over?”

Results day will arrive whether they spend ten weeks worrying about it or not.

Encourage plans.
Encourage rest.
Encourage them to be young people again for a while.

Quote of the week

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.”

If you haven’t been to one of my information sessions where I share the details of what’s happening between now and June, you can sign up here:

calendly.com/biologybyclare
Instagram: @thealevelclub
Facebook: Biology by Clare

A Level Biology Revision: Why It’s Time to Move On from Paper 1

richard — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

I think it is fair to say that the banana question has had a bigger week than most celebrities.

It has been discussed in classrooms, kitchens, group chats, car journeys, revision sessions and on Student Room.

Some students have spent more time thinking about that banana than they spent answering the question.

There are probably students who could now write a dissertation on banana ripening… but still haven’t opened a Paper 2.

Enough. The banana is done. Let it ripen in peace.

Paper 1 has gone. There are still two papers left and plenty of opportunity to put together a strong overall performance.

On my mind this week

I’ve been thinking about momentum this week.

Some students are still discussing Paper 1.

Others have already opened a Paper 2.

By Friday, those small decisions add up.

One of the hardest things about exams is knowing when to stop looking backwards.

The temptation is to analyse every question, compare answers with friends and try to calculate what grade you’re on.

The problem is that none of that helps with the next paper.

The students who usually finish strongest are not necessarily the ones who felt best walking out of Paper 1.

They’re the ones who reset the quickest.

Things I’ve learned

Every year students convince themselves that they need to spend the week before Paper 2 memorising more facts.

Most already know far more biology than they think.

The challenge is using that knowledge in an unfamiliar context.

A question about a kidney isn’t really about kidneys.

It might be testing transport across membranes, osmosis, proteins, enzymes, homeostasis, data analysis or all of them at once.

The students who do well are often the ones who stop thinking in topics and start thinking in biological principles.

If you find yourself saying, “I’ve never seen this before”, then take a deep breath and pause.

You almost certainly have.

It is usually the context that is new, not the biology.

Study tip

Between now and Friday, I would focus on three things.

Complete at least one full Paper 2 under timed conditions.
Mark it properly and identify the areas that are consistently costing you marks.
Go back through those areas and make sure you understand them rather than simply re-reading notes.

At this stage, a carefully reviewed paper is worth far more than several papers rushed through and never analysed.

For Parents

Students often come out of the first exam expecting to feel relieved and instead feel flat, frustrated or uncertain.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the paper went badly.

It usually means they cared about it.

Try not to spend the week discussing individual questions.

The most helpful thing you can do is help them turn their attention to Friday.

A decent meal, a walk, an early night and a calm house are all more useful than another conversation about bananas.

Quote of the week

“You cannot change the cards you are dealt, just how you play the hand.”

If you haven’t been to one of my information sessions where I share the details of what’s happening between now and September, you can sign up here:

calendly.com/biologybyclare
Instagram: @thealevelclub
Facebook: Biology by Clare

A Level Biology Revision: The Final Days Before Paper 1

richard — Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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, “How much revision have I done?”

Start asking, “What should I be doing now?”

It’s a much better question.

What you do over the next few days matters far more than spending your time thinking about what you should have done in February.

On my mind this week

Revision and preparation are not quite the same thing.

Learning content is one job. Getting yourself ready to perform in an exam hall is another.

As June 4th approaches, the balance should start shifting towards the second.

By this stage, most students know more Biology than they think they do. The challenge now is being able to access that knowledge quickly, accurately and under pressure.

That means the next few days should feel different from the revision you were doing a month ago.

If I were sitting Paper 1 on Wednesday, I’d begin with a simple question:

“What would I hate to see on the paper?”

Most students know the answer almost immediately.

Perhaps it’s immunity.

Maybe it’s transport across membranes.

Perhaps it’s gas exchange, digestion, mass transport, DNA replication, protein synthesis, variation, classification or exchange in plants.

Whatever the topic is, that’s where I would start.

There is very little value in spending another evening revising the topics you already know well simply because they feel comfortable.

The topics that make you slightly uncomfortable are often the ones that deserve your attention most.

I’d also be spending a lot of time with exam questions.

Not necessarily entire papers, but carefully chosen questions that force me to retrieve information and apply it.

Questions expose weaknesses quickly.

They show you exactly where your understanding is secure and where it still needs work.

Most importantly, they stop revision becoming passive.

I’d also be explaining Biology out loud.

As I keep saying, the easiest way to discover whether you truly understand something is to try teaching it.

Take a process such as DNA replication, protein synthesis or the movement of water through a plant and explain it without looking at your notes.

Also, I’d be paying attention to the basics.

Sleep
Food
Routine
A short walk
A bit of fresh air

Students sometimes convince themselves that the answer is another three hours at a desk. Occasionally the better decision is getting an early night and returning to the work with a clearer head the next morning.

Things I’ve learned

Looking at the entire specification three days before an exam is enough to make anybody feel overwhelmed.

There are hundreds of pages of content
Required practicals to remember
Definitions that need to be precise
Processes that need to be understood rather than memorised

A much better approach is to shrink the task.

One topic
One required practical
One set of questions
Complete it, then move onto the next
Momentum is far more useful than panic

Every year I see students make significant improvements in the final week because they stay focused on the next useful thing they can do rather than worrying about everything that remains.

Study tip

For the next few days, try creating evidence instead of seeking reassurance.

Evidence looks like:

Answering exam questions
Completing active recall
Explaining a topic without notes
Marking your own work
Identifying mistakes and fixing them

Reassurance often looks like:

Reading through notes you’ve already read several times
Watching another video on a topic you already understand
Reorganising resources
Making revision look productive

One tells you what you actually know.

The other simply makes you feel busy.

For Parents

This is often the week when confidence seems to fluctuate by the hour.

A student can feel positive after lunch and convinced they’re going to fail by dinner.

That is completely normal.

Try not to judge preparation based on mood.

Exams feel close now and emotions tend to run high.

The most helpful thing you can provide is usually stability.

Encourage sensible sleep, regular meals and some time away from revision.

Help them focus on the process rather than trying to predict the outcome.

The paper will arrive soon enough.

Until then, there is still useful work that can be done.

Quote of the week

“The best way to reduce exam stress is to replace uncertainty with evidence.”

If you haven’t been to one of my information sessions where I share the details of what’s happening between now and June, you can sign up here:

calendly.com/biologybyclare
Instagram: @thealevelclub
Facebook: Biology by Clare

A Level Revision: Why Post-Exam Analysis Usually Makes Students Feel Worse

richard — Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On my mind this week

I see this every single exam season.

Students walk out of an exam feeling fairly neutral about how it went.

Then the post-exam analysis begins.

Someone says they got Question 4 wrong.

Someone else remembers a detail you forgot.

A friend confidently gives a different answer.

Suddenly a paper that felt “fine” starts becoming “terrible”.

Then comes Student Room.

You search for an unofficial mark scheme.

You find pages of students debating answers.

Some sound certain.

Some sound panicked.

Some are convinced the grade boundaries will be a certain way.

You read one thing that does not match your answer and immediately start mentally knocking marks off.

Hours later, you feel worse than you did when you actually walked out of the exam.

None of this changes a single mark on the paper!

Things I’ve learned

Once an exam has finished, there is very little value in carrying it around for the rest of the day.

You are allowed to talk about it.

You are allowed to laugh about the weird question everyone hated.

You are allowed to feel annoyed if something caught you out.

There just comes a point where thinking about it stops being useful.

I have watched students convince themselves they have performed terribly and then open their results in August and realise they were nowhere near as accurate as they thought. Likewise I have heard many students say, “That was really easy”…and they failed.
Students are usually very good at remembering mistakes.

They are much less good at remembering everything they got right.

Study tip

Give yourself permission to close the door on a paper once it is done.

Avoid unofficial mark schemes.
Avoid spending the evening on Student Room.
Avoid the group chat where everyone suddenly becomes an examiner.

Move on to the next thing.

For Parents

One question seems to appear after every exam:

“How did it go?”

The problem is that students usually do not actually know.

They know whether they found it hard.

They know whether there was a question they disliked.

They know whether they remembered everything they wanted to remember.

What they do not know is how the paper will be marked, or where the grade boundaries will sit.

“How did it go?”
often invites an emotional answer rather than an accurate one.

A more useful question might be:

“What do you need right now?”

Sometimes they need food, or a nap (that would be me!)
Sometimes they need to switch off for an hour.
Sometimes they simply need help moving onto the next exam without carrying the last one around with them. The ability to move on and focus on the next task is what is most useful.

Quote of the week

“You cannot start the next chapter if you keep rereading the last one.”

If you haven’t been to one of my information sessions where I share the details of what’s happening between now and June, you can sign up here:

calendly.com/biologybyclare
Instagram: @thealevelclub
Facebook: Biology by Clare