Best exam guides for Nat5

[Issy422]

DD starts S4 on Monday and has already been doing assessments towards Nat5 exams, so thinking that it's time to buy some study guides.

Art and Design appears in the list of impending changes for Nat5 https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/109767.html so I'll hold back on that one.

I know not to buy past papers as they're on the SQA website for free.

I can see there are Leckie, How to Pass and Brightred. Are there any others and which have you found most useful? Does it depend on subject or is one brand typically better than the others?

I have a whole bunch of N5 books DD never touched, of all the types you mentioned, so I wouldn't bother to be honest with you, unless you can get the books for free. I tried to sell them but lots of other people are selling them too so I might give them away for free to someone who wants them.

Try your local charity shops, they will only be a few quid. My experience is that they aren’t well used! Which ones you choose is really just personal preference.

The BrightRed English NAT5 Coursebook (not the Study Guide) is good. ds was really struggling with maths and we went through the RUAE parts in it together and I became his "tutor" and it really helped him "get it". It also had some good points for folio. Not so good for Critical essay or Set text.

Brightred French wasn't great, but as we had bought already we used for some extra listening practice from their online files.

TeeJay maths is good for lots of practice questions, but schools usually provide lots of these, or you can find lots online.

The rest ds never really used apart from the odd check if he was stuck at something.

If she is doing PE - looking through the SQA Understanding Standards webpage with sample portfolios and marking makes it VERY easy to know what they have to write.

What other subjects is she doing?

There are a couple of teachers doing videos for physical (Mr Smith?) and chemistry (Mrs Adams?) that are good too, and anything she is struggling with for maths there are usually youtube videos too that sometimes help.

Thanks everyone. I'll look out for that English coursebook @WeAllHaveWings. The ones she might need are for Maths, English, Music, Art & Design and Design & Manufacture. She generally does well in exams, but where she doesn't, teachers' comments were that she needs to learn what examiners are looking for rather than not being capable, which is where I thought the study guides might help. However, one of the teachers has now told them not to buy any guides. Music teaching is poor and she now has the poor teacher for all lessons, so I will definitely get her something to help there. Thankfully she has instrument tuition separately, so it's only the theory that relies on that teacher. I always had the Letts guides back in the day and found them a great help, but we didn't have YouTube in those days.

She is obviously, very unlike ds, very creative!

Meant to also say if you are buying from BrightRed (also Leckie I think) directly, there is usually a decent 20% young scot card discount.

@WeAllHaveWings Yes, not sure where from. She's chosen completely different options to me, so I'm not much help other than for maths. She's also doing two humanities but thankfully doing really well with those as I'm no help there either. Good tip about the discounts.

I'm still trying to get to grips with the education system in Scotland too as I grew up under the O level / A level system. Last parents' evening I had mistakenly thought Nat4s were S4 and Nat5 was S5, so didn't asked the right questions. The thought of her going to uni at 17, or even potentially 16, still concerns me a little.

Read the Bitesize page on Nat5 English to understand what RUAE was and first time I realised that English is one exam here, not separate language and literature exams. Now realise it must have been an RUAE paper that she recently bombed (I assume, as it was a past paper out of 30). Can see why knowing the marking scheme makes a big difference on that one. This will be the 'showing working out in maths' battle all over again.😂

The teachers will likely suggest things as the term goes on, mine has just started s3 so a bit to go before exams but he’s the 3rd of 4 so I’ve been through this with older 2 and the teachers provided amazing resource lists for their subjects for revision etc also no rush yet as the work hasn’t been covered yet so there might be some from pupils who have moved up to higher who have study guides etc. we didn’t buy anything just used teachers stuff and online bbc not size was great too.