Sixth Form homework

Sixth Form students should expect to be spending at least three hours on homework per subject per week. Most of this time will be spent on work to be handed in and assessed by teachers. In most subjects, students are also expected to spend a considerable amount of time on independent research and wider reading. It should rarely be the case that they have “done everything”.

Students also have an additional hour on their timetable allocated to private, supervised study in each of their subjects. Teachers will set work to be completed during this hour, which may include tasks such as research on a particular topic or re-drafting of a particular piece of work.

If you would like to do more in order to maximise your chances of succeeding in school (and life as these tips will help you learn anything), you should apply the following advice to learning the work you have done in your lessons. Use your books and any other supporting resources you might have access to at home to do the following:

• Regular testing is the most effective way to learn something. It is actually retrieval practice as you are training your memory how to retrieve information.
• Re-reading and highlighting remain the most common study practices but on their own are very ineffective. Consider written notes and visual organisers and always create flash cards to help with testing.
• Space out tests rather than cramming in repeated re-readings of a textbook in one long session.
• Interleave different topics, returning to them from time to time instead of dealing with them in blocks and moving on.
• Students should generate their own answers with essays or a few sentences, rather than using multiple choice tests.
• Vary the conditions of practice to prevent learning becoming rote and tied to one context.
• Change the test format or the room you study in, often.

Updated: October 2023