GCSE revision 2026

[AmpleUser]

Should my dd be revising already? I’m not sure when they should start or how many hours per day they should be doing at this point. My dd says her friends not starting revision until Easter holidays but this sounds late.

My son has mocks after February half term so is revising now, an hour after school, at school 4 x a week then some on his own in the evenings.

No, mine will start beginning of March. Obviously will keep up with homework etc in the interim. Edited to say I’m worried that if they start too early, they’ll run out of momentum. It’s a slog.

DD is revising already, but has done so all through year 10 & 11 so might not be a 'typical' teen (she is chasing A*'s)

My son is in year 11. At GCSE information evening in September the school said students should be doing 16 hours revision weekly from Sept to exams and provide revision planners. I'm not sure many are doing this much, but my son is doing c.10 hours a week

DD is mid-mocks right now so has been revising since November really, and I expect her to carry on through until the exams, with the exception of a last blast of four or five days off in Feb when she’s got an overseas trip.

Has she done mocks? If so, how did they go?
If everything is fine, then keeping up with homework and attending school is probably enough for the moment.
If she is not on track, I think she should be looking at ways to catch up now.
Easter is a good time to ramp things up, but not a good time to be starting revision for the first time.

My DS started in January for his GCSEs last year. Not super hardcore revision, but definitely revising. Hardcore revision started in March e.g. every night

My son revised for his first mocks in November, then didn’t do much after those had finished but he has another set of mocks after Feb half term and has just started revising again for those. I’m hoping when he’s finished the next mocks he will keep up with ongoing revision until the real exams.

It depends. The exams go on for a really long time and you get exam fatigue if start too early. If they are getting good marks in mocks and ongoing work and have good understanding then it’s fine to wait until March and many schools do a huge amount of revision / practice papers in class anyway. If there are gaps in understanding that need to be filled that’s different but they may need extra help to do that. It also depends if they have good organised notes to revise from. I can’t remember when you get the timetable but the exam boards may have the info online so you can see how spread out they are.

They should still be learning now. There’s no point revising now, so far ahead of exams. March is plenty early enough. And parental stress helps no one.

My daughter is currently doing 3 booster sessions after school per week so hasn't started revising at home just yet.

Mine has mocks after Feb half term so will start revising next week or week after I imagine, he goes to a few subject revision sessions at school during the week so an hour a few times a week will be fine.

For the real exams I think probably a couple of weeks before end of term and during Easter holidays, maybe 2/3 hours a day. We’re going for a few days so he’ll not revise then.

The exams last ages and so they have plenty of time during them for revision too.

We're in the middle of mocks - she's been revising since November and I don't imagine that she'll stop before May exams. This is normal in her circle.

The timetables are all published, school has sent ours out so everyone has the dates. In most subjects they’ve finished the syllabus so the focus is shifting to exam technique and revision.

More depends on general learning I found, I did little revision but had always read a lot, and kept up on stuff in school, while others did revise, but had missed a lot of school/never read unless forced. You might say this was a hundred years ago, but I do have family with teenagers who say it's pretty much the same, obviously down to the individual child as well, some need much more revision.

I know time has moved on since this thread started! Are your DC revising now?How many hours a day over Easter holidays? Are you calm and consistent with your children? I don't feel this at all right now, normally I am not a "telling off" parent and I have done twice today already.

Here my DD did max 3 hours yesterday with multiple prompting, and maybe an hour today, plans to go out all afternoon. 3-4 hours social media a day. She says she is "locked in" to studying, and doing more than others. I go between offering her a cup of tea/ tidying her room and then being cross.

It doesn't help that her older brother learns as he goes along and appeared to be doing very little before exams, but got his expected very high grades, I appreciate he is not a normal child to compare with.

She has no interest in understanding or reading around any subject (that also winds me up, so anytime I have tried to sit with her has not lasted, I just study differently) she just wants to regurgitate learned phrases.

Her mock results were C/B and couple As, she needs As but not A*s to do what she hopes next. First exam of this round next week.