When I talk students through their weekly timetable, one of the questions I ask them is “how much homework do you have each day?”. Would you have an answer to this question, or is it just ‘lots’? I know how easily work can creep up before we realise how much of our days, weeks, and months we are giving to them. Homeworks is important, but should be time-bound in order to make sure there is time each week for work, rest, and play. So how much homework should students be doing in year 11?
How much homework should I be doing in year 11?
Set goals for your homework
You of course want to do well, and are obviously a good student who doesn’t want to disagree with the teachers. But putting unnecessary pressure on yourself through an already stressful year is only going to make it harder to reach your goals.
If you haven’t set specific goals for yourself yet, I’d recommend you do. It helps you to focus on the things that give you the best chance of success, and therefore make the best use of your limited time this year.
Students don’t just get work from one direction. There are several demands on their time. This is how I tell my students with a homework and revision schedule to prioritise their study time.
First do the homework on the timetable.
Then do the revision on your schedule.
And only then do any additional homework you have time for.
Every school approaches homework slightly differently but generally there is a schedule to the way homework is set, so you shouldn’t have work for every subject on every day. And some pieces of work are more than can be completed in an evening (like coursework) and would be spread out over a longer time period.
Make a homework agreement
Some schools have an agreement on how much homework students should be doing in year 11. Students with additional needs may have a specific arrangement on this. If you don’t have one, I would encourage you to aim for one. Ideally homework should be no more than 1-2 hours per evening, and in year 11 it is likely that a significant part of that would come under ‘revision’ anyway.
If this doesn’t match up with the work you are being set, speak to your teacher, form tutor, or head of year to see how they can help you with it. The work is set to help you rather than to burn you out, and in most cases they will be happy to offer advice and support.
If you encounter any challenges, share this with your parents/guardian. The teacher can speak to them to confirm the amount of time you’ve spent doing homework. Any pushback is likely to be based on the need to encourage students to work. If you can show that is what you are doing, that should be all that is required.
Get a homework study buddy
If you find homework challenging, try working with someone else in your class. This can often make the work less daunting, and actually more beneficial. You could use break and form time to work together, or perhaps work together after school.
I often do this for the work I find most challenging even now. It helps me to overcome any mind blocks I encounter. It also adds some accountability if you’ve arranged a time to work together. You’re less likely to both lose motivation at the same time. You get the work done faster and have more fun doing it.
Make time for rest and play
I think teachers sometimes forget just how many plates you’re balancing in year 11. They’re balancing a great deal themselves, and it is very easy to forget the challenges of being a teenager. If you are finding you need a break, you can’t focus any more, or you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s time to step away from the books and do something for your wellbeing.
Rest time can be sleep, reading, spending time with family and friends, meditation, walking, stretching, listening to music, or anything that recharges you.
Play time can be sports, social events, gaming, crafts, or anything that inspires you and makes you feel joy.
Making time for these even when you have lots of work to do is actually beneficial. They help you to recharge. Our minds and bodies need a balance and none of us can work all of the time. Check out this blog for more details on why.
If you would like to make better use of the days, weeks, and months leading up to your exams, you can get a copy of The Ultimate Guide to Exam Preparation completely free at subscribepage.io/greentutors. And if you’d like help implementing a schedule that works, you can sign up for a revision workshop with me at https://calendly.com/greentutors/revision-masterclass.
I’m always being forwarded GCSE maths hacks videos (like this one) claiming to provide a shortcut to maths success with some neat trick. While they’re a lot of fun to watch and often highlight a neat numerical pattern, they’re no substitute for actual understanding of the subject material and problem solving skills.
GCSE Maths Hacks: Anti-Learning
What works for one doesn’t work for all
Often these GCSE maths hacks will show you a trick that works for a particular question, or a particular type of question. They might not even include any explanation of why they work. So how do we know this particular GCSE maths hack will work for the problem we’re trying to solve, even if we remember the hack?
The answer is that we don’t, unless we work out why the hack works in the way it does, which means working out the theory being applied in the question. And if we understand the theory, do we need a hack, or just practise applying our problem solving skills to this theory?
Difficult to memorise
These hacks only work if we remember them, which means committing a series of GCSE maths hacks to memory before your exam. While that may be possible, it’s actually harder than learning the material on the curriculum. There are endless GCSE maths hacks and it would require an extensive library to cover the entire curriculum. Alternatively we can select a few trusted hacks and hope that those are the ones that answer the questions on our paper. But what are the chances of being that lucky?
It just doesn’t make sense to put the time and energy into memorising hacks instead of putting it into learning the curriculum and practising applying it to exam style questions.
As I said, in order to correctly understand GCSE maths hacks and when you apply them, we need to understand the maths theory that makes them work. Which would mean that we don’t really need the hack, right?
This is potentially the one bonus I see in GCSE maths hacks videos. We can work backwards from the solution demonstrated in the hack to the theory that makes it work. It’s a good way to demonstrate mathematical patterns. But having analysed it in this way, we not only don’t need to remember the hack but will have gone one better by understanding the theory.
The correct application of mathematical theory will allow us to solve whatever question we are presented with for GCSE maths, with one additional skill.
Develop problem solving skills
It is important to practise solving a variety of problems in preparing for your exams, and as a valuable life skill. The mathematical problems we are presented with in exam preparation are a workout for the mind, and develop our ability to solve problems outside of maths.
In order to develop our problem solving skills we need to work with a variety of different questions, rather than see if we can find a shortcut that doesn’t require any understanding to apply. That misses the entire benefit of an education in mathematics.
Practice makes perfect
It is really important to keep practising these skills to develop our mathematical understanding and problem solving skills. This practice does not come through using GCSE maths hacks to find answers. It comes through understanding the problem and working out a route to the correct answer. Practice, practice, and more practice is how we get really good at this. Most of us study maths for ten years before we sit our GCSEs. Nothing about that decade of practice suggests that success comes overnight.
You can find lots of practice questions by topic at Maths Made Easy.
How many times has a teacher told you to check your work? It isn’t to do their job for them, but because we often make mistakes that we can correct ourselves if we check our answers by checking our method, or using an inverse operation to work backwards. How can we do that when we’ve used a GCSE maths hack? We can’t check or reverse a method without first understanding it.
So while I encourage you to keep sharing any interesting maths videos you find, resist the temptation to memorise this hocus pocus and instead spend time understanding the logic behind the problem, so that you can solve any type of question that comes your way.
One of the main reasons that students put off studying is that they don’t know where to start. Building tasks into a schedule and setting up positive habits for your wellbeing can take the mental energy out of the equation, so building a revision schedule for wellbeing becomes a process to follow from one day to the next. I regularly take students through this process in my Revision Workshop, and I’ve summarised the process here.
How much time do you have each week?
The first step is to work out how much free time you actually have each week. There are 168 hours in every week, but you split them between:
School
Travel
Sleep
Mealtimes
Extracurricular activities
How much time do you need to take from your 168 hours for each of those?
What is left over? Can you allocate one third of that remaining time to study? (Splitting it between work, rest, and play).
I would encourage you not to scrimp on sleep. Teenagers generally need around 9 hours of sleep each night, which is more than their parents, as they’re still growing and developing their brains. This is very important for processing everything they’ve learned in the day so still counts towards the revision plan!
What are you studying?
This is a nice and simple task. Make a list of the subjects you are studying.
For most students, this will look like:
Maths (Foundation, Higher, Functional Skills)
English literature
English language
Biology (Triple / Combined)
Chemistry (Triple / Combined)
Physics (Triple / Combined)
Humanities (History / Geography / R.E.)
Modern foreign languages (French / German / Spanish / Italian)
It would be helpful here to also note the exam board and specification. If you’re not sure, you should be able to get this from your teacher or tutor, or post it in the Facebook group and I’d be happy to help.
Take a look at where you would like to be for each of these and how far you are from achieving that at the moment. This will help you to prioritise your time through the schedule to those that need the biggest push.
Now that you know how much time you have each week to study, and where you need to focus your attention, you can start to build your weekly revision schedule.
The best place to start is with a default diary. Set up a template of a weekly calendar (if you already use a weekly calendar online or in a diary you can use this, but you’ll need to have enough room to add detail). Fill into this calendar the weekly commitments you already have. This is for an average week, so don’t worry too much about ad hoc events.
Remember to add in time you give to:
School
Travel
Sleep
Mealtimes
Extracurricular activities
Then you can fit in your revision schedule around the default diary, being mindful of the times when you have energy, the times when you are able to work well, and the times when you will need rest. For example, if you have a sports club and after school study on Monday night, will you be getting up early to study physics on Tuesday? Be kind to future you and you will be more likely to stick to the plan.
Example revision schedule
ADHD and revision schedules
Students with ADHD often find it much harder to make and stick to these revision schedules. They may struggle to sleep, and it will be difficult to switch focus from one activity to the next. It is much better to focus on one task per day, and allow time for plenty of rest before bedtime.
Design a diary for holiday studies too, but be kind to yourself!
What comes next?
Everything becomes much less daunting with a plan, and if you’re able to follow through these steps with your child they should start to feel more in control of their workload. You can also get a copy of our day by day planner from Amazon to take you through these steps.
All of the team at Green Tutors are passionate about STEM education. We’ve all chosen to study and work in STEM fields, and choose tuition to share our passion for learning STEM with our students. STEM learning, and student wellbeing are the two pillars that this company is built on.
So it will be no surprise that we’ve accumulated a LOT of STEM resources and connections in STEM education since starting business in 2012.
STEMazing is the creation of Alexandra Knight, and its mission is to empower women in STEM to shine and inspire young people to become our next generation of innovators and problem-solvers. Alexandra Knight is an award-winning engineer, presenter and diversity advocate. She is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Fellow of the Women’s Engineering Society, a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor at Brunel University and a STEM Ambassador.
One of the reasons girls do not consider careers in STEM is because there are not enough visible role models. I was lucky enough to join the STEMazing Women Inspiration Academy in 2022, and became one of the role models delivering live online STEM sessions to three different primary school classes. Here is my role model video.
The STEMazing Kids Club allows you to bring interactive STEM sessions into your home. They’re targeted at primary aged children, but I had a lot of fun doing them at the age of 38, so they’re fun for everyone.
I have been a STEM Ambassador with STEM Learning for more than a decade now. They deliver support for STEM learning across the UK in a variety of ways, including teacher CPD (continuing professional development) in STEM subjects, bringing STEM role models into schools as part of the STEM Ambassador Programme, and providing bespoke, long-term support for groups of schools through ENTHUSE Partnerships.
Schools can register to receive free support from STEM Ambassadors, or use the resources on the website. They also offer a directory of various other STEM resources across the internet.
As they have been providing this support for a long time now, they’re experts in supporting barriers to STEM Learning, and a very hard-working team.
Little Crafters Boxes is the work of Radha Borthayre, a former GCSE and A level computer science working with SEN students who found the boundaries of mainstream education did not have space for her creative teaching style. With an already successful business making wood-based gifts and craft materials, Radha combined her talents to deliver a monthly STEM subscription crafts box for home educating families. The business has grown to provide a wide range of resources for all families, and is a great way to inspire your little people to learn and try new things.
Making sweets and slime as science experiments from the Beaches of Sydney right through to the Australian Bush (in a pickup truck no less!) was the ‘slightly’ unusual inspiration for Sublime Science! After ‘Mad Marc’ had been a Professional Science Communicator (maker of slime & launcher of rockets!) across the UK, Canada and Australia & been a ‘real’ teacher in a school in Nottingham… inspiration struck. Why not pick out all the best, most fun, most exciting science experiments learnt over the years, all over the world, and put them all together?… Sublime Science was born!
‘Mad Marc’ featured on Dragon’s Den with his unforgettable science parties, bringing STEM learning to the most memorable of childhood experiences. You can now book a Sublime Science party over most of England, or get a copy of their eBook to learn how to deliver your own.
Inspiring the future of STEM learning is critical to our future and our childrens’ futures. The problems of today will be solved by the next generation, and they should be encouraged to develop a lifelong love of learning about the world around them.
For more resources and guidance on supporting your child with their maths and science GCSEs sign up for the free guide here.
While many students dive into their books with the best of intentions to revise, without clear study goals they aren’t making the best use of their time. Goals are essential in order to make progress with any challenge, and help us to prioritise our time as well as measure our success. I help my students to set their study goals when we get started with tuition, and this is how we decide them.
Motivating teenagers to revise
Ultimately, teenagers aren’t massively different from their parents, except that they haven’t finished developing physically and mentally, and they are in the early days of their independence. And so, like their parents, it is very difficult to make them do something they don’t want to do. The challenge is instead to make them want to do it.
I tend to liken it to my own experience of going out for a run. I hate running. If you feel the same way about this as I do, you’ll be able to relate. But if you’re a fan of running, perhaps a different metaphor will work for you. I hate it, but I know that it’s good for me, mentally and physically, and I know that I will get a lot of benefit from doing it as I have in the past. But I don’t want to run, and so most of the time I don’t. Now when I need to go for a run – my jeans don’t fit anymore or I’m starting to get out of breath walking up the stairs – I know that just saying to myself, “I need to go for a run”, means absolutely nothing and it won’t happen. I need to focus on the reason why I feel that I need to go for a run.
I want to wear my favourite jeans.
I want to feel healthier.
I want to improve my mental health.
Those mean something to me, and those are things I want even if I don’t want to go for a run. So that is where my motivation will come from.
What does success mean for your child?
Students don’t want to sit exams. They don’t want to memorise set texts and definitions. They don’t want to highlight and underline and summarise and mind map piles and piles of information. They want to pass their exams and go on to what comes next. That’s what we need to focus on when we’re setting goals. The goal needs to motivate them, and not daunt them.
This is different for every student, and finding out what that is for your child is what will truly motivate them. Ask them why it is important to them to do well in school. Really ask them to think about what it means to them. You don’t want to hear anything that is about making someone else happy, or impressing someone else, or just ‘doing well’. That doesn’t mean anything. What will it mean for their future happiness if they are able to do well in their exams? If they pass maths and english they can go on to college to study childcare. If they get a 6 in biology they can go on to take it for A level and get into university. If they go to university they can get the job in mechanical engineering that they really want. That means something to them, and if you can get really clear about that for your child, you can keep them motivated through their exams. That is their one big goal.
Building good habits
There are often some quick wins that you can introduce to make the challenge easier. Keeping up with classwork and making good notes in lessons can make a big difference. There’s nothing worse than heading into revision and realising that all you’ve got on a crucial chapter now means nothing to you. Check out this blog on making good study notes.
Set specific study goals
Now that you’ve got a clear motivation for your child, you can break that down into their specific study goals. What grades do they need to get in their exams, and how close are they to achieving them at the moment? What grades did they get in their most recent mock exams? Do they need to go up one or two grades before the final exam? Are there any subjects where they are already at or above target? Set a specific goal for each of their exam subjects and note how close they are to them at the moment.
There’s more to life than exams
Goal setting should apply to more than exams. Does your child have anything else going on this year that they need to spend their time on? This will make it less likely for them to achieve a study goal. If you move the goalposts too far away it will kill their motivation to work towards them.
If your child doesn’t have any goals that aren’t exam focused, this might be a good time to introduce something. I don’t mean they should take on a major hobby that will add to their overwhelm. They should simply enjoy some time away from the books each week. Support them in finding time for something they enjoy, that they are good at. Remind them of who they are and what they are capable of when their confidence for study is dented.
A comfortable stretch
Once you have your child’s goals, rate how achievable they are at the moment. It is OK to have some that are going to be a stretch, but no more than 3. Ideally these would be the most important to them, as they will need the largest slice of their time to achieve. If they need a top grade in a specific subject for their further studies, but are a few grades under at the moment, that is a clear stretch goal. If they are on track for their target grade, what push would help them get closer to their big goal. Make sure that they have realistic, achievable, meaningful goals.
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