A guide for students · From the winter before the exams
How to make a revision timetable
A useful revision timetable starts from your exam dates and works backwards, spreading every subject across the weeks so each topic comes round several times rather than once. Plan short sessions of testing yourself, mix two or three subjects in a day, and leave real breaks, because a timetable you can keep to beats a fuller one you abandon.
Start from the exam dates
Put every paper on a calendar first, using the exam timetables, which have each board’s dates and a calendar file for just your subjects. Count the weeks you have, then list the topics in each subject from its specification, so the plan covers the course rather than the parts you like.
Working backwards shows how often each topic can come round. If there are twelve weeks and a subject has twelve topics, meeting each one only once is too little; the plan needs to bring each back several times, spread across the weeks, which is what the research on spacing suggests for anything you need to remember months later.
What should go in each session?
Give each session one clear job: a set of questions on a named topic, a past paper section under timed conditions, or going back over the questions you got wrong last week. A session that just says “Chemistry” tends to become rereading, which does much less than testing yourself.
Mixing subjects and topics within a week spaces them out automatically, and switching between types of question makes you practise choosing the method as well as using it, which the exam will ask you to do.
Keeping it going
Leave evenings or a whole day off each week and plan for things going wrong, with a spare slot or two that can take a missed session. Sleep matters to memory, so late-night sessions that eat into it cost more than they give.
Check the plan each week against what actually happened and against your marks, and move time towards the topics you are losing marks on. cookie’s revision plan can set your past papers, flashcards and practice questions out across the weeks up to your exam dates, around your lessons.
Where to check
- Cepeda and others (2006), Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks
- Dunlosky and others (2013), Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques
Checked against these on . The rules change from year to year, so the pages above are the ones to trust if anything here disagrees with them.
Common questions
How many hours a day should I revise?
It depends on the time of year and on you, but a few focused sessions of testing yourself do more than long hours of reading. Near the exams many students manage several sessions a day with breaks; earlier in the year an hour or so on school days is a lot.
Should I revise one subject a day or several?
Usually two or three a day. Switching keeps each subject spaced out across the week, and it stops one subject taking over.
When should I make a revision timetable?
Once the exam dates are known and most of the course has been taught, which for summer exams is often the winter or early spring. A lighter plan earlier in the year still helps, since spacing works best over months.
What if I fall behind my timetable?
Drop the missed sessions rather than trying to catch up all at once, and move the time to the topics you are weakest at. A timetable is a plan for the time you have left, so rewrite it when things change.