How do I get an A grade?

Is there really a secret to getting an A grade that only the greatest teachers have worked out? Well in my latest book I argue there are five principles which the good teacher applies. Actually, there is no secret, just an analysis which we need to do, and having understood the principles, apply them, put them into practise and reap the rewards…for any subject.

Principle 1: Understand the philosophy behind your exam. Every subject has a philosophy or purpose behind the specifications and questions. What is the philosophy behind your Philosophy of religion and Ethics exam? I argue that philosophy gives us an angle – a way of looking at the world which we can call a critical sense. But how do we develop this sense?  How do we learn to argue rather than just assert, or evaluate rather than just list points for and against?

Principle 2: Analyse your specification. Whatever your specification you can never face a question in an exam which isn’t on the syllabus.  However, syllabuses are full of ambiguities and holes.  I argue that we need to analyse these and discover what take the examiner has on the specification. As an example, no-one really knew how to interpret the business ethics part of the A2 syllabus when it was first introduced. But they do now. I show you how to break the syllabus down.

Principle 3: Do an exam question analysis. Straightaway we encounter a problem: OCR does not release the exam questions until ten months or two papers after the exam you will be facing. But you need them now, not in April. By listing all questions by theme in columns, you can discover where the gaps are and hence anticipate what questions are more likely to come up next time. Then if you have past questions covered, you will have every eventuality sorted.

Principle 4: Is the one which takes time and a little imagination. You need to put the specification and past questions together to see firstly, how the two relate, and secondly, what areas have never been examined on. A couple of years ago students were surprised to find Preference Utilitarianism taking up an entire question. How unfair, some protested. But it was in fact thoroughly predictable that one year an area that hadn’t been examined on would be. In fact, the areas that have never been examined on are more likely to be covered next time. It took me some time to do this analysis but it will get you payback come the summer.

Principle 5: Read every examiner report ever published, their mark schemes and relate this carefully to each paper. Then summarise their conclusions in clear points. This is the subject of the last chapter, where I quote at length from the reports to show you what the examiner is repeatedly begging us to do (but we seem repeatedly to fail to do. It got boring after a while finding the same points repeated).

If you’re a teacher reading this, then my tip would be to place critical reflection at the heart of your revision programme. It is of course a big question how we do this, and one I will return to shortly.

In the meantime, make sure you read the book – it could save you hours of time and a lot of heartache when the results come in with a lower grade than you were expecting!