11 Plus Exams Forum

How many hours is it reasonable to study in one day?

How many days per week?

Hi - make a timetable. Look up exam dates first and put on other things e.g. family events so you can see the number of weeks available.

Depending on homework, I think two hours during the week is reasonable - so a couple of subjects can be tackled. At weekends allow some 'down time' but my DS found six hours was about right; we had a schedule of past papers downloaded from exam board websites. These were used to highlight 'gaps' and gave an idea of progress.

School should be putting on revision classes, lunchtime help sessions and other support.

Not sure about timings but DD1 seemed to take lots of unscheduled breaks
We downloaded past papers & the mark schemes (especially for science) & then went through & "question spotted". DD1 then would work through questions on a particular topic - many of which were asking for very similar answers - just slightly different fact patterns. This gave her confidence in knowing what was required of her. We kept one whole paper to do as a mock at the end. She found that a better way of revising as if she just learned the topic areas she would struggle with application. This way the two went together. Good luck!

DS can manage a 2 hr slot, he tried a 30 min break, but then struggled to get back down to work.

Part of the problem is that 5 of his courses are in their first year. So, only a sample paper available.

Edit: make that 7!

Thanks for the tips. I'll print off the available papers.

Generally thought that 50 minutes with a 10 minute break is optimal, unless doing a full practice paper of course.
And as detailed above, passive learning to be avoided - especially by 16 year old boys

For subjects that only have sample papers rather than past papers, text books and revision guides often have 'end of unit' or 'exam style' questions so you can compile your own 'papers'.

Check the exam board web site to make sure that any text books or revision books are recognised by the exam board.
Many cases of errors in books!

For science many of the older papers are ok if you check content of the module.

The TES sometimes has good revision stuff and its free to register.

Also try googling as there are some good school websites which sometimes are open access.

He has books with questions and I have the exam spec. The school moved to the level 2 certs aka IGCSE!

Finally he is motivated and I have to say that March is better than May.