4 Steps to Get an A* Predicted in Year 12

So I have a lot of students that come up to me and they ask me about how to get A-star predicted in maths and I've had literally at least 600 A-level maths students in my time and so I feel like I know what people need to do in order to get an A-star predicted. So what I've done is I've boiled it down to four steps that you should take as a year 12 student that's starting now in September for you to ensure that you get that A, A-star predicted for your university application because it is extremely valuable and most universities require an A or an A-star in maths for whatever you want to do, especially if it's a decent university. So the first thing I'm going to point out is A-levels is very different to GCSE but it's not that difficult. What it is, is it's consistency over a long time. So if you start this from day one it's not necessarily going to be super difficult but you will get that really high grade. It's not about cramming right at the end because that just doesn't work, it's about that consistency. So let's just jump straight into it. Step one, you need to do exam practice not textbook work. I cannot stress this enough, the number of students at school who do not listen to me and just keep going over the textbook again and again and again and they get stuck on like a grade C is astonishing. This is because it covers the basics and the textbook is really good for learning the basics. You can learn A-level maths pretty well using the textbook but you're going to cover all of these basics in class. So if you're in class you can just do that without doing the textbook work. So I would only recommend using the textbook if you aren't going to be in on a particular lesson for whatever reason. So if you're focusing a lesson, you're doing all the work your teacher's setting, the only thing you're really going to need is exam practice which is extremely efficient. Why? Because what are you doing at the end of year 12? You're doing exams for your UCAS predictive grade so it makes sense to do exam practice. Now the problem that a lot of students say is well what if I've forgotten the content and that's the thing with my method here you're doing the exam practice right after the lesson's finished. So every week you're doing exam practice for whatever you've learned in that week. That way you don't have to waste your time relearning content because you never forgot it to begin with which is the key thing here. We need efficiency and I'll tell you why in a second as well. Now as a result of this some of these exam questions even if there are six markers, so this should take you six to eight minutes, you might end up spending over half an hour on over an hour on. This is completely fine because it means you're actually learning. If you're doing textbook questions and there's 10 questions on solving a quadratic, if you can do them pretty quickly and your limit is your writing speed, that's a waste of time because we're not training you to write faster right. Whereas instead if your limit is the thought process that tells you that that question is worth doing. So again if the limit is your writing speed, don't bother doing the question. If the limit in terms of how long it takes you is the actual thought process and knowing what to do, that's a question you'll want to do because it means you're actually improving your learning maths. You're getting better at the application. A-level maths is all about understanding. Unlike GCSE maths you can't just memorise patterns, you have to actually understand what you're doing. The other problem with this efficiency is you're going to have supercurriculars. Now if you're bothering to watch this video, you're probably quite an ambitious person looking to go to a really good university, do a really good degree apprenticeship, do a really good course or whatever. That means you're going to have to do a bunch of supercurriculars to prove to the university or the course or whatever or the degree apprenticeship that you are capable of and you're interested in whatever. This takes up a lot more time. In year 11 you had no supercurriculars. Your one job is to do the exam. In year 12 you have like three different jobs. Some of you are going to want to learn how to drive, some of you are going to want to learn how to do all these other things. The problem here is you have the supercurriculars to focus on and you have to do well in the exams. So if you're really efficient with your time in terms of learning content, then that means you have the time to do the supercurriculars and I can't stress that enough. If you're also doing the textbook and doing all this stuff, you won't have enough time in the day to do your supercurriculars and just to point out, content does come first. So if you're going to get a great C in the exam, there's no point in doing supercurriculars. Okay, so step two, get into a routine early. Again, this is why I'm uploading this video before most of you would have properly started A-level. As I mentioned before, A-levels is very different to GCSEs. A-levels is about doing the same thing for a really long time and doing it efficiently and doing it consistently as well. So you're going to have free periods and free lessons, you need to use them efficiently and effectively. So what do I mean by that? Well, firstly, I'm just going to point out there are going to be people in your free periods that are just going to be watching Netflix or listening to music, right? That's just something that's going to happen. You obviously don't do that. What you need to do is do your work from day one. So even if, let's say, you start year 12 properly on the Friday, right, if you have a lesson period one and two and then you're free the rest of the day, do exam questions on what you learned on the first lesson or two. That's what I mean, get into the routine early, okay? Because then, otherwise, next Friday you want to think, well, I can still take it easy, I haven't learned that much. It doesn't matter how much you've learned, you need to do the exam practice from day one. Because as long as you've covered one topic, which you probably will, you can do exam practice for that. You don't need to wait until you've done half the content to start doing exam practice. That's another misconception students have. So again, using them effectively from day one is really, really important. So figure out how you study and use that in those free periods and lessons. If you have half days, again, what you want to do is work until your normal finish time. So let's say you finish up, it's a half day, you finish at one o'clock, you normally finish at three, get home and then work until like 3.30 or 4, okay? You also want to do the same thing every single week. The problem that people have with being inconsistent is they don't do the same thing because then there's a decision fatigue, there's a decision paralysis. So for example, if you wanted to go to the gym regularly, you need to go on the same day at the same time and do the same thing because that's how you build up a habit in your brain. If you're doing something different in your private lessons, your free lessons, every single week, at some point you're going to stop doing it. There's also an issue of wasting time. So let's say you get into a free lesson and you think, okay, what do I do? And then you think, you think, you think, then you get different books out and then you're looking through your phone, you're looking through, you're wasting time. If instead, I know that on my Monday free lesson, I'm doing maths exam questions. On my Wednesday free lesson, I'm doing physics exam questions. There it is, right? It's already ready, it's already done for me. I don't have to decide anything, which means I'm more likely to do it every week. I'm not wasting 10, 20, 30 minutes every single week deciding what to do, which again, I've seen students do a lot. Step three, getting help early if needed. I cannot stress this enough. So I'm going to go through a few things. I'm going to tell you some anecdotes as well. The first things first is content can be difficult. Exam questions can be difficult. You are probably going to miss lessons at some point, whether it's interviews, work experience, you might get sick because you're surrounded by disgusting young year people. You may have a bad teacher that you just can't really vibe with. You have supercurriculars, time management, a lot of stuff's going to go wrong. And when I say will go wrong, I've never met a student go through A levels without any issues whatsoever, like literally no issues. And again, this is out of 600 plus students. It's, and these are students that again, got a minimum of grade sevens in their GCSEs. So these are smart, capable students. Everyone has issues at some point based on all of this. So I just want to make that clear that something going wrong is expected, it's going to happen. The problem is students come to me very late. So whether this is in school or for tuition, students will come to me, let's say a month before the year 12 exams. And they'll say, okay, my last pure grade was a grade E, can you help me get to an A? And I'll think, in four weeks? Really? Because it's four weeks, you do roughly five to six hours of lesson per week, and you've had 30 weeks of lessons. So you're expecting me to cover 180 hours of content in four weeks. It's not really viable. And the worst one is midway through year 13, where students will come to me in January and February of year 13 maths. And some of them, they're on an A, they want to get to an A star. Some of them are B, they want to get to an A or an A star. That's possible. But some students I get are on an E, and they want to get to an A. And it's just, there's so much to cover. And there's so much to do that's very unlikely. The other problem here is students aren't always consistent. So at the school that I teach at, I offer my free periods to students who also have free periods, and they can come to me for help. But they're not consistent with it. So for example, some of them will start in February, and then it's like they'll come three times before their exam in June. Right, like if you need help, get it early and start early. I've had some students come to me literally on October, and they'll come to me every single week until June. That's perfect, you're getting consistent help, you're getting back on track. The next thing I want to point out is of course with tuition, because the reason I mentioned tuition is first of all, not all teachers will give up their free periods for you. Secondly, you might not have a teacher that you really kind of get along with, you don't really understand or whatever. Again, with tutoring, if you notice your grades are doing badly, but you feel like you're working hard, you need to get tuition for whatever subject as early as humanly possible, the earlier the better, the earlier you get it, the higher your grades going to be. That's as simple as. But again, be careful when you go for tutoring, make sure that the tutor is not just repeating the same mistakes your school is, make sure that you're getting something new out of it. Maybe it's exam practice or whatever, just be aware. I have a video on how to tell if a tutor is actually good, I'll link it in the description. And again, listen to advice. I have students that argue with me sometimes at school, well not argue, but they kind of disagree with me and they say, oh no, I'm going to try this. The thing is, it's your first time doing A levels, I've taught A levels for 10 years, so I probably know more than you about this. The most common thing I say to people is, for example, there's a particular student I had in year 13, who instead of listening to my lessons was actually doing something else on whatever, and he was listening to like Bison Maths and Zeeshan Maths. And he said, oh no, I think this works better for me. But the thing is, he was on a grade U. And so my first thing I said to him was, and how's that working out for you? Because if what you're doing hasn't worked for a year and a half, what makes you think it's going to work in the last half of the year? Right, let's move on to step four, using the summer and the holidays. Now, the problem that some students have is, the first thing is they're way too ambitious. So some students will say over the October half term, they're going to cover all of the content that they've learned in September and October for all of their subjects in five days. No, that's not going to happen. Or they say the summer, you know, to get the six weeks holiday, they're like, oh yeah, I'm going to they don't end up doing it, which is why having the UCAS exams in September is really difficult for some students, because they just don't revise, because it's the summer. So here's how I would use them. And just so you know, again, as I said in the last bit, things will go wrong. So you will fall behind at some point, it might only be one lesson, it might only be two lessons, obviously. But again, if you get sick for a long time, you're going to fall behind, right? So what you want to do is pick weak areas and focus on them. Don't do the whole freaking thing. The number of times I've seen students, we've finished all of pure, so that's 14 chapters, and they're like, okay, I'm going to start studying. They start from chapter one. Why? Are you telling me you don't know how to factorise a quadratic? Really? So again, pick clear targets. Say I'm going to do all of the exam questions on logarithms. I'm going to do all the exam questions on trigonometry. That's it. Keep it really clear and have a clear goal. This will also make you more motivated. If you say to yourself, I'm going to cover everything, and I'm going to do every past paper, I'm going to do everything in the textbook, you are not going to be motivated to do it, period. Whereas if you pick something nice and tight, right, nice and concise, you are more likely to do it. So my recommendation is literally just pick one or two weak areas, one or two things, one or two little topics, and use the rest of the time to relax. Because again, super curriculars, and UCAS applications, and references, and work experience, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's so much going on, you need to take time to relax. So pick one or two weak areas, and that's it. Don't say to yourself, I'm going to do every single question in the textbook, or I'm going to do every single exam question, because you will not do it, period, right? So hopefully, those four steps help. Again, if you follow these four steps, I know that they're not like super, super, super clear. But if you follow these four steps, I promise you, you're going to get an A or an A star predicted in all of your subjects, but in particular maths, I might make a more specific maths one based on like different topics and stuff. But this is the general advice that if you follow, it will work for all of you individually, it's very personalized, because you get to slot in which topics you do, you get to slot in what works where, instead of me giving you a concise structure. But hopefully you found this useful, and I'll see you in the next one.