GCSE revision time

[stubiff]

What would be a reasonable total amount of revision time for a subject.
Before someone says 'it depends' - assume a subject with no coursework, e.g. Maths, and where the student is trying reasonably to get a good (to them) grade.
As an example, if they did 10 weeks, covering 10 subjects, 3 hours a day, then that averages 21 total hours on a subject.
Appreciate they are still at school for some of that period so prob wouldn't want to do 3 hours a day!

Have your schools said anything?

For upcoming mocks, I mentioned to my DS about doing 8-10 hours per subject and he thought that was a lot!

Depend if they have kept up with it and understand it, or if they’re working out bits from scratch. If they are just literally revising it, then 8-10 hours (two days work) sounds about right to me. Certainly no less.

But I’d expect it to be in holidays and at weekends.

I would have expected the child to already be revising by now. My son year 11 already knows where the gaps are in each subject and knows what to revise and what not. He knows he will need more time for English lit then maths for example

@Maxus Depends when the mocks are! Not the same for all schools.
What dates are you basing yours on?
i.e. how many weeks revision do you think is reasonable.

My son has been revising since the middle of year 10, just half an hour a day. Now he knows exactly where the gaps are and what he needs to revise. There's no point waiting untill mocks then cramming. The earlier you start you retain the information much better, cramming is just going over work from over a year ago you had forgotten about

@maxus That's good, but guess won't be the norm, by any stretch.
And I'm not talking about cramming, here, say starting a week/day before.
8 weeks, 10 weeks, whatever seems reasonable to DC/people, is not cramming.

Our son's school suggested no less than 20 hours per subject. For the 2/3 months ahead of the exams (Feb to April), he made a plan to do that, and broadly, kept to it. Basically an hour per day on a school day, and 3 hours per day on weekends and holidays. Obviously, he didn't religiously stick to it as some days he had homework, and some days at weekend and holidays, he did nothing at all if he had something else on. But he had it all mapped out on a colour coded spreadsheet, so if he missed a session, he would copy and paste that cell to a future date to catch up. Some days during weekends and holidays he'd do a lot more. When it got to May, in the days/weeks the exams themselves, once he'd finished his "revision" plan, he'd do past papers, again, planned on a spreadsheet to ensure he could plan in a few past papers for each subject, but he'd do one per day doing the test in the morning and then review answers and revise "gaps" in the afternoon. All that was after being on top of his subjects anyway, and having done some basic revision for their January mocks.

@user1497207191 that sounds like such a sensible, thought out plan. Not only are the spreadsheets getting everything organised - I imagine they are quite motivating and help with mindset/nerves. It also becomes a record of what you’ve achieved.

I’m going to send you a pm.

20hrs per subject if starting with learning from scratch would for my DC be totally insufficient, it really depends on how 'quick of brain' they are and how much they have retained up to now.

At this time in y11 I'd go for what can the student reasonably do in terms of extra work, and what can be fitted in to that time.

@user1497207191 Do you mind me asking please what grades your son got in his GCSEs? This sounds like a brilliant plan of his and we just wondered what this looked like in outcomes. Thank you so much for being generous enough to share.

9s in Maths, Physics, Biology, French, Geog and History, 8in German and two 7s in Eng Lang and Eng Lit.

@stubiff it is the sheer volume of information they have to retain that is hard to comprehend unless your child has gone through it. DCs sat around 24 exams.

For English lit alone they had to know important themes, the order events took place, characters and quotes for 15 poems (plus form, structure, imagery) a Shakespeare play, a 20th century novel and a 19th century novel. That is one subject.

For History 5 topics and about 24 mini topics within each topic, dates, names of people, events, diseases. Each paper had different style questions and marks for answers. Some had sources provided some you had to know everything so more difficult as everything relies on knowledge and recall.

The earlier they start the easier it is because at this point they are still learning year 11 content to add to the year 10 stuff they should be able to recall. GCSEs are two part, one is understanding the content in the first place and secondly being able to recall or apply that knowledge.

Even a mock at this point will be one paper for English lit as they will probably be still working their way through a book. It depends on what grades they want, mine spent some of year 10 holidays working on what they lacked on the year 10 exam papers. Mine got similar results to user149. Mine are at a state school, they know that they are competing against students whose parents paid £25k a year for their children's education. The bell curve is always applied, you just have to try to do better than others.

Some revision is set as homework anyway but in all honesty when you work out how much free time teenagers have it can be the same amount of time they are in school, mine were out at 3pm, home by 3.25 and went to bed at 11pm. That is a lot of free time. No I didn't expect them to be doing homework at 10pm but they can come home and spend a few hours doing work before dinner. After all, lots of schools have homework clubs and fee paying schools have a longer school day.

The really dedicated ones will be doing small amounts little and often throughout Y11- they won't do 3 hours each night, but they will do a small additional amount of each subject each week, on top of homework- and this is ideal rather than trying to cram at then end! I appreciate that a lot of Y11s lack the maturity (and time!) to do this though.

Don't forget you will have Easter holidays shortly before exams, where hopefully 3 hours of revision most days would be achievable.

If you can motivate him to do something, even if it's just 20 minutes extra per subject per week, I think that's more valuable than trying to start an ambitious revision program 10 weeks before exams!