It’s no secret that A levels are much harder than GCSE, so you can’t really get away with leaving all of your revision until exam time. Thankfully, it’s easy to start your revision early, doing little and often to ensure that you have the best chance when the exams eventually roll around.

Before you start spending hours on revision, you should prioritise your homework regardless. Whether you like it or not, it has to be done and revision is just something extra on the side. You should treat your homework as a way of consolidating your work from class, not as a chore.

We recommend that you spend around 3-4 hours per subject revising what you’ve learnt in the past. Of course you can increase this if you have a test coming up or it’s getting closer to exam time, but we’d say that it’s a good standard for general studying. Not all of this time has to be hard-core studying though (like making notes or researching information), that’s why we’ve put together a list of four easy ways to make sure that you don’t leave all your revision until exam time:

1. Spend time going over your notes each day

This is another method of making sure that you understood what you learnt in class, which is essential for A level success. This doesn’t have to be rewriting them, it could just be annotating them with extra detail or pulling up a couple of past paper questions related to what you covered in the lesson.

2. Every so often do a few past paper questions from previous topics you did

Even if you have already been tested on them, the more you remind yourself of the content the easier it will be to revise at exam time. Spending an hour on some questions is a quick and easy way to refresh your memory without having to write out tonnes of notes.

3. Read ahead about your next few lessons

Not all teachers hand out plans of what they’re going to teach each lesson, but if they do then we highly recommend that you read ahead. Whilst it’s not technically revision, reading ahead gives you a basic understanding of the concepts you’ll be introduced to in your lessons. This means you’re more likely to understand it and you’ll have the opportunity to ask about the things you didn’t understand.

4. Make revision materials for what you’re learning at the minute

Due to the vast course content for A level subjects, it’s unlikely that you’ll have time to make all your revision materials at exam time. Doing summaries at the end of each topic and creating resources like flashcards means that during exam time you don’t have to worry about making them and can instead focus on doing things like past papers. These also make it easy to flick back through the things you’ve learnt as quick refreshers throughout the year.

Remember, a little revision every so often can go a long way when you eventually come to revising for exams and hopefully this guide gave you a few ideas on how to make that possible!