Plan, check, fix: know what you know
The best revisers don’t just work hard. They keep asking themselves: What am I trying to learn? Is this working? Why did I lose that mark? Teachers call this metacognition, which just means thinking about how you’re learning.
Why bother?
The Education Endowment Foundation looks at what actually helps students do better. Their 2025 report says this is one of the biggest wins there is. On average it’s like getting 8 extra months of learning. And it’s just three habits.
1. Plan (before you start)
- Colour in the revision checklist: green (know it), amber (sort of), red (no idea).
- Pick one amber and decide what “done” looks like. For example: “I can do 5 density questions with no notes.”
2. Check (while you work)
- Before you mark an answer, rate how sure you are: 1, 2 or 3. If you’re often sure and wrong, that topic needs more work than you think.
- Stuck for 5 minutes? Look at a worked example instead of staring at it.
3. Fix (after every test)
Go through every mark you lost and put it in one of these piles:
- Didn’t know it → test yourself on it
- Knew it but couldn’t use it → do more mixed questions
- Silly mistake (units, misread, rounding) → exam technique
- Ran out of time → timed practice
💡 Your biggest pile tells you what to do next week.
Use these on the site
- Revision checklist for planning
- Topic tests and mock exams to check yourself
- Independent learning
Where this comes from: EEF, Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning guidance report (2025 update).
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