The default GCSE revision plan is April. Most people know it doesn't work well, and most schools do a version of it anyway, because the alternative means deciding in September to spend time you don't yet feel you need to spend.
This page is what that decision looks like laid out across a year.
The planning grid
| Period | Weekly revision slot | What it covers | What you are looking for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sept to Oct half term | 10 to 15 min, once a week | Content taught in Year 10 | Whether the routine holds up in a normal week |
| Nov to Dec | 10 to 15 min, once a week | Year 10 content plus the autumn topics | Topics that were fine in Year 10 and aren't now |
| Mocks | Exam conditions | Whatever the mock covers | Question level analysis, not just grades |
| Jan to Feb half term | 15 to 20 min, once a week | Topics the mocks exposed, by class | Whether the gap actually closed on a recheck |
| Mar to Easter | 15 to 20 min, twice a week | Weak topics plus spaced returns to earlier ones | Students who can start revision unprompted |
| Easter to exams | Two short sessions plus past paper practice | Consolidation only, no new systems | Independence, and signs they're pacing themselves |
Print this page for a copy of the grid on its own.
Autumn: build the habit while it is cheap
The autumn slot is small on purpose. Ten to fifteen minutes a week, on content taught last year, at the start of a lesson.
Keeping it small is what makes it work. The question you're really answering this term is whether the routine holds up in a normal week, and for most ambitious plans the answer is no. A modest routine you never skip in October is worth more than a good one you drop in November.
Mixing topics up matters more than covering everything here. Coming back to a Year 10 topic while you're teaching a Year 11 one gives you the benefit of spacing without costing any extra time.
Using the mocks to redirect the plan
Mocks are the only point in the year with enough evidence to change what revision covers, and it's easy to waste them by reading only the grades.
The useful output is question level analysis: which questions students lost marks on, rather than which students did badly. That tells you what the spring slot should cover, and it will be different for different classes in the same department. That's fine, since the cadence is the thing that's shared.
Expect the list to include topics that were secure in Year 10. That's what forgetting looks like, and it's exactly what a spaced routine is for.
Spring: act on what the mocks said
The spring slot grows a little, to fifteen or twenty minutes, and to twice a week after February half term if the timetable allows.
Two things keep it useful. Work on the topics the mocks exposed rather than going through the specification in order. And recheck: a topic covered in January should come back in March, closed book, so you find out whether anything stuck. Without the recheck, nobody learns whether it worked, which the intervention page goes into in more detail.
The last eight weeks: consolidate, do not introduce
The most common mistake in the final term is introducing something new, whether that's a new platform, a new revision system or a new set of resources.
By April, students have limited attention for anything that isn't directly exam shaped, and the time spent learning a new system comes out of revision time. Whatever you're going to use should have been running since September.
The final weeks are better spent on practice under timed conditions, on material already revised, with enough space left for students to work on their own. If the autumn and spring have gone well, this term needs less from you than it usually gets.
What this plan does not include
It doesn't include a way to see who has done what. Nothing on DoRevision records who worked through which activity, so your own assessment data stays the measure of whether the plan is working.
It also makes no claim about grades. It's a shape departments can keep going, built on spacing and retrieval, and the evidence for those is set out with its limits on the retrieval practice page.
If you'd rather build your own plan than adopt this one, the decisions behind the shape are on the revision programme page. Everything is browsable by specification on the revision pages, and the official past papers are the raw material for the final term.