Resitting A Level Maths: How to Plan the Year

After results day I get quite a few enquiries from students who have just missed the grade they needed, or from their parents. Usually they've already decided to resit, and what they want to know is how to make sure next summer goes differently.

In my experience a resit year can go well. The student already knows the course, has a full year to prepare and knows what the exam feels like. What it often doesn't come with is a school timetable, so it needs a plan.

The short answer

Back to school, or on your own?

This is the first decision, and it's worth making before anything else. Where it's possible, I'd strongly recommend going back to lessons at your previous school or college. In my experience students who do that alongside tuition get noticeably better results than those who resit entirely privately.

The honest question to ask yourself is whether you will sit down and work every week, all year, without anyone asking you to.

If you've struggled before with work that a school didn't set directly, that's worth taking seriously now rather than in March.

Sort out the practical side first

This is the dull part, but it's the part most worth doing in September.

Find out where the marks went

If the whole course is redone at an even pace, most of the year goes on things the student can already do. The way to avoid that is to look at the evidence.

It's worth being realistic about what they'll show. Sometimes the marks went in one or two clear places, such as a whole section of calculus or most of the mechanics. More often, particularly from a lower grade, they slipped away right across the paper, especially on the harder questions. Then the year is about the overall approach, not about patching two or three topics.

If the scripts don't arrive, or don't tell you much, sit an unseen past paper on your board early on, in exam conditions, and have someone mark it properly. It shows where you are now, which matters more than where you were in June.

Lost marks tend to fall into a few groups:

Build a week that replaces school

In sixth form a student usually has four to five hours of maths lessons a week, and is expected to do about the same again on their own. Those lessons happen whether anyone feels like it or not. That's the part of school a resit year loses, and in my experience it's the part that matters most.

So the aim is to put fixed points back into the week, something like:

How many hours? People often assume that because they've studied the content before, a couple of hours a week will be enough. In my experience it isn't. Getting from a C to an A isn't a case of filling one or two gaps. It means going back over large parts of the course.

Planning when those hours happen matters as much as the number. "Ten hours a week" tends to shrink. "Tuesday 7pm, Thursday 5pm, Saturday morning" is much more likely to happen.

That's especially true when some of those slots involve other people who are expecting you. Two small habits help. Set a phone alarm for each study session, so that not working becomes a decision you make rather than something that just happens. And keep a simple log of the hours you actually did each week, as an honest check on whether the plan is working.

Most of what I've written about studying A Level Maths privately applies to a resit too, including the weekly hours, getting into a routine and how much tuition to budget for.

Plan the year in three stretches

1. September to OctoberSet up
   Arrange the exam entry, get the scripts back, start the weekly routine, and begin exam questions straight away on topics that are already fairly secure. Some early progress tends to help confidence.
2. November to FebruaryRebuild
   Review the whole course, topic by topic, with extra time on anything that cost marks last time. Keep doing exam questions each week on whatever has just been covered, so it turns into marks as you go rather than all at once in April.
3. March to JuneSharpen
   Full papers under timed conditions, marked properly against the mark scheme, with each lost mark put into one of the groups above. By May the question should be less "do I know this topic?" and more "where am I still losing marks?".

What tends to work second time round

Students who do well on a resit tend to have a few things in common.

I've worked with resit students who were already doing two hours a day of past papers and videos. What they were missing wasn't effort.

It was deciding what to prioritise, and getting feedback on their working.

Where we fit in

We work with resit students every year, some back in lessons at school and some resitting entirely privately. The ones who do best treat it as a new course with a fixed weekly routine, and that's what we set up from the start.

For most resit students I'd suggest weekly 1-1 tuition as the base. That's where the gaps from last time get worked on at the student's own pace, and where their working gets looked at every week. Resit students are often free during the day, which widens the choice of lesson times.

Alongside it, our Year 13 Exam Practice group is a weekly session of exam questions in a group of up to six, with feedback on each student's own working. It suits students who are already fairly secure, at around a grade C. It's paced for the rest of the group, most of whom are in Year 13, so early in the year it covers mostly Year 12 and early Year 13 material. The live lessons through A Level Maths Academy cover the Year 13 content two hours a week, recorded, and are free for students in our group classes or 1-1 tuition.

More of any of these helps if the budget allows, though none of it replaces the hours a student puts in on their own. If you'd like to talk a resit year through, here is how our programme fits one, and the initial consultation is free.