How to Survive the Final Year of GCSE Mathematics
By N Pinhey

Be organised and stay on top of all your work as much as possible throughout the 6 important stages during the last year of your GCSE course. If you do fall behind, then you will need to find a fast revision method to ensure that you maximise your remaining revision time.

In the final busy year of secondary school, you do not have a whole academic year to get ready for the GCSE exams ??you only actually have 2 terms! Students are regularly caught out by this, and how quickly things happen to them. Because it is the first time they have done exams, students tend to react to things as and when they happen. Instead, it is far better to look ahead and to be prepared for what will happen - students and parents can benefit from knowing in advance the 6 important different stages that will happen during the year, so that they can be ready at these important times.

(1) Mock Exams ??Difficult to Revise for, but a Useful Opportunity

The Mock (or practice) exams always occur at the wrong time !Mock exams are held either at the end of the long Autumn term just before Christmas, or they take place immediately after the Christmas holiday - not ideal timing !! The mock exams also usually occur before students have actually finished studying their subjects and it is frequently an opportunity missed !

Mock exams are a very useful opportunity to find out where a student has got up to when faced with a past exam paper, with a few months to go before the exam. (Some schools make this fairer by adjusting the mock paper to only include topics the students have covered). However it is frequently an opportunity missed though, as pupils tend not to revise for it !

If students do take the opportunity to revise thoroughly for their mock exams then they will benefit greatly ! They will have started the revision process and started to put some information into their long term memory, which will then make it easier to revise again in the summer.