Doing every past paper in order is the commonest way a student wastes the last six weeks, and it feels like the hardest work of the year.
In the last six weeks before an examination, most students do past papers, in order, one after another, marking them against the answers. It is exhausting, it feels virtuous, and it is close to the least efficient thing available.
Here is why.
A whole paper takes two hours and tests forty topics, most of which the student can already do. So two hours of work produces perhaps twenty minutes of useful information and no practice at all on the parts that are weak. Do six papers and you have spent twelve hours to confirm six times that the same three topics are the problem.
Worse, marking your own paper with the answer beside you is not marking. Students give themselves the benefit of the doubt on method marks, on working they did not show, and on answers they would not have reached without a glance. In our practice examinations, which are timed properly and marked by a teacher who writes on the script, students routinely score below what they were getting at home. The gap between those two numbers is discovered either in a practice or in the hall.
What works better, in order.
First, one full paper, sat properly, marked by somebody else, broken down by topic. Not a total: a breakdown. A mark of fifty eight is useless information. Knowing that thirty of the lost marks came from two skills is the whole plan.
Second, topic practice on the two or three worst areas. Fifteen questions on the same thing in a row, which is where actual improvement happens, because the student is forced to get better at the specific thing rather than to remember it once.
Third, questions rather than papers. Take the last five years of papers and do only the questions on your weak topics. Ten minutes each, twelve of them, and you have had more useful practice than in two whole papers.
Fourth, timing practice, separately. Many students know the material and lose marks to the clock, and that is its own skill: reading the whole paper first, knowing when to leave a question, coming back. Practise it on purpose rather than hoping.
And fifth, in the last week, do almost nothing new. Go over the things you have already fixed, sleep properly, and eat before the paper. A tired student loses more marks than an underprepared one.
One warning about the thing parents most often ask for in the last fortnight, which is more hours. Adding a fourth session a week in the final stretch rarely helps and often does harm, because the student is already at the limit of what they can absorb. Better hours beat more hours, and by this stage the evening before is worth more asleep than at a desk.
