STUDYING FOR YOUR A-LEVELS? HERE’S HOW TO MANAGE YOUR TIME!

It’s important to look at your timetable as a whole when it comes to planning out your term, and how you’re going to stay on top of all of your assessments. Something that I have seen many A-level students do, is organise their time so that they can fit everything into each week. If you want to stay on top of your studies and get top grades, here’s what you need to be focused on:

HOW MUCH TIME YOU HAVE

A typical year 12 timetable in my school has students either doing 3 A-level courses and 1 EPQ, or 4 A-level courses. When you do the math (which I have!), you end up with 16 hours of lesson time out of 25 hours of school. That leaves you with about 8 hours of study periods per week, as 1 hour of study period usually goes towards school assembly. 

You likely will have an hour and a half of homework per subject, plus maybe an hour of time spent on preparing for lessons. That means you’ll spend 2.5 hours per subject, for a total of ten hours per week of outside class time being put back into your studies.

If you do use all 8 hours of those study periods, that leaves about 2 hours left of the week to put back into your studies outside of your school periods. Now, you may have some weeks where you need more time than that for your school work, like if you have an important test or a large assignment due, you will likely end up putting more time into your school work. 

Remember A-levels are a big commitment, they can be quite time-consuming. However the alternative is joining the workforce, which can take up even more of your time, so it’s important to treat your A-levels like the commitment they are, and dedicate time out of your week to your lessons! Hopefully you have picked the A-levels you have because you really enjoy them, and therefore hopefully you don’t mind the extra work needed to put in in order to really succeed.

THE BEST WAY TO ACHIEVE GOOD GRADES AND BALANCE THE EXTRA TIME NEEDED IS TO USE THE STUDY PERIODS PROVIDED FOR YOU. IT LESSENS QUITE A BIT OF YOUR OUTSIDE SCHOOL HOURS, AND GIVES YOU AN ALREADY DESIGNATED TIME WHERE YOU KNOW YOU WILL BE STUDYING.

You don’t need to spend every single study period studying, as it is also important to socialise and relax, however, it would be wise to utilise the time already given to you, so that you’re not spending all your nights working on your school work. 

If you don’t want to use your study periods, you can always use your evenings to study, however, many people have after-school commitments – part-time jobs, family responsibilities, so after school may not work for them or they may need to choose a day on the weekend to do the work as well. Figure out what works best for you and your timetable, and stick to this strategy. It is a lot of work, however students who use this method tend to see higher mark results overall.

To help you stick to this schedule and figure out when works for you, you can also use study apps.

STUDY APPS

There are a couple of different apps that I would recommend, but use whichever ones you prefer!

THE FIRST ONE IS FOREST.

Forest allows you to put what your goals are into the app, start the clock when you start working, stop the clock when you stop working, and it shows you how long you’ve been working and how you’ve progressed. It provides a little graphic of a tree showing how much time you have spent studying. If you’re someone who is visually stimulated and motivated, this is quite a good way to motivate yourself to see how much you can accomplish.

ADAPT IS ANOTHER STUDY APP THAT IS FREE TO USE.

In Adapt, you can put into it exactly what your A-levels are, and it creates a work timetable for you in less than a minute. It also automatically keeps track of your revision, which helps keep track of how well you are sticking to your timetable (perfect for those of us wanting a simple solution to organising our A-level study hours!). 

ARE YOU A VISUAL LEARNER?

You can also watch my YouTube video on how to use a revision timetable and all of the benefits that go along with it!

I do hope you have found this helpful, and that you have a great A-level term. For more helpful tips, check out the rest of my blog posts, as well as my YouTube channel, where I talk all about A-level biology, how to make the most of your A-levels, and more!

Have more questions? Put them in comments down below and I’ll get back to you! 

– Miss Estruch