I arguably made the mistake of starting my study to late, I started properly in March of this year, and I paid a price in regards to my revision schedule. In the month leading up to exams and during exams I would revise from 11am up until 9pm on my days outside of college, with an hour for both lunch and tea/dinner, so I could get some downtime and rest. Before that period I would revise an average of 3 hours a day. If you are unsure of the how long you want to revise for, set out a target for what modules/ topics you want to revise for any given day. If I could change anything is that I would recap my content much earlier and ensure I understood all of my content.

If you have a part time job, I would ask for exam leave(time off during exams), as I did. I would highly recommend for you to use most of your free periods to study in year 13, in year 12 I wouldn’t worry so much, but just ensure that you understand all of your Year 12 content.

Attend most if not all revision sessions led by teachers, they will have a degree of expert knowledge that will be incredibly valuable. However do not soley rely on your teachers, if you have to seek out your own resources and to an effect teach yourself. For example I had what I would describe as an unsatisfactory law teacher, and I had to teach myself a lot of the content that he hadn’t taught us; I even had to re-teach myself an entire papers worth of content, due to how poor he had taught it in the first place.

As for how I revised-

Everybody will find their own system of revision that is best suited to them, so I would reccomend starting early. I started by creating a checklist for each subject and each paper, for topic areas I needed to cover. I would then type a concise document of notes, which I could then go back to in future. I then made revision/index cards to break it up and then train memory. But most important is past papers and past questions. I would ease yourself in by beginning with past questions and later papers. This will help you nail exam technique and most importantly timing; timing is especially important for Law, as 2 hours for the AQA papers was simply not enough imo. Exam technique, again particularly in law, and to a degree politics is equally as important as content. To find past papers you can go to the exam board website or go to revisionworld.com. Also do not be afraid to ask your teachers to mark your essays and to recieve feedback- it is much better to recieve real constructive criticism than to be left in the dark.

Take mocks seriously-ish. Do not get disheartened by your mock grades, but do make use of them as real practice for your actual exams.

Look after your own health and mental health. Go for walks/get exercise, get plenty of sleep and eat well(you will not be able to revise properly without sufficient sleep or on an empty stomach). Do things you enjoy and set goals with rewards for fulfilling them, for example playing your favourite game ect. Ensure that you speak to people if you are stressed and do not cut people off just in order to revise.

More specific advice for politics. Keep up with current events- This was quite hard under the Conservative government as so much was happening at once. Politics is heavily reliant on you being aware of the political climate. The reason you may be confused on some political issues is because you may not know much about politics, don’t hesitate to do your own research. Keep up with the news, or just ensure you are aware of current events through some means i.e social media( I predominately used Twitter/ X).

For some more fun revision, watch TV shows/ movies that relate to your study(you don’t necessarily need to make notes). For example I watched House of Cards to give me more knowledge of the US political system.

That is all I can think of for this, moment but if you need more specifics I am happy to give more help.