Drill the slip-prone algebra — free
Habit 2 will name your leaky skills; the practice portal has graded sets to re-test them — differentiation, integration, algebraic manipulation and more, at A-Level standard.
Open A-Level practice →By the final two terms, A and A* students know roughly the same mathematics. What separates them is behavioural — four specific habits in how they write, review, practise and calibrate. Every one of them is copyable, starting this week.
The A* in Maths is decided by overall performance across all papers, and the boundary sits high enough that there is almost no room for unforced errors. That single fact reframes the final two terms: at this level you are no longer fighting the mathematics — you are fighting the gap between what you know and what lands on the page under time pressure. The four habits below all attack that gap.
When I audit the papers of students stuck at A, the dropped marks sort into four buckets, in remarkably stable proportions: algebraic slips inside correct methods (sign errors, mis-expansions — pure execution); "show that" gaps, where a derivation skips a step the scheme paid for; unfamiliar applied contexts, especially mechanics set-ups and statistics interpretation in words; and timing losses — final questions rushed or untouched. Notice what's missing from the list: "didn't know the topic". At grade-A level, that bucket is nearly empty. More content review is therefore the one investment that cannot buy the A*.
A* students write solutions a stranger could mark. That means: every substitution shown before it's evaluated, variables defined when introduced, and — on "show that" questions — no gaps at all, because the printed answer means the marks live entirely in the journey.
Question: y = x²·e^(2x). Show that dy/dx = 2x·e^(2x)(x + 1).
The A version (drops a mark):
dy/dx = 2x·e^(2x) + 2x²·e^(2x) = 2x·e^(2x)(x+1) ✓ result… but the product rule was never stated and the factorisation jump is unexplained.
The A* version:
By the product rule with u = x², v = e^(2x): u′ = 2x, v′ = 2e^(2x).
dy/dx = u′v + uv′ = 2x·e^(2x) + 2x²·e^(2x)
Taking out the common factor 2x·e^(2x): dy/dx = 2x·e^(2x)(1 + x), as required.
Same mathematics. The second version earns the method mark even when an arithmetic slip corrupts the final line — that insurance, multiplied across a whole paper, is frequently the entire A–A* gap.
A students revise by topic; A* students revise by error. Keep one page (paper or spreadsheet) with a row per dropped mark: question reference, error type (slip / gap / context / timing), the corrected line, and a date to re-test. Ten minutes after every practice session. Within three weeks the log tells you something no textbook can: your personal top three leak categories — and at this level the leaks are personal, not topical.
Why it works: corrected errors get a memory advantage (the hypercorrection effect), but only when the correction is processed actively and revisited. The re-test date column is the active ingredient — an error log you never re-test from is just a diary of disappointments.
Doing papers by topic ("this week: integration") feels efficient and trains the wrong skill. The exam's hardest demand is deciding what kind of problem you're looking at — and topic-blocked practice removes exactly that decision. From spring onward, A* students work in mixed blocks: pure and applied shuffled, topics unannounced, under time. It feels worse. The research is unambiguous that it performs better — the difficulty is the training stimulus.
A practical structure: three sessions weekly — one mixed-topic block (timed), one full or half paper (timed, marked same day against the official scheme), one error-log session re-testing old leaks plus fluency drills on your slip-prone algebra.
Every board publishes, for every paper, a document most students never open: the examiner's report. It says, in plain language, where the national cohort lost marks and why — "candidates frequently omitted the constant of integration", "few stated the hypothesis test conclusion in context". This is the closest thing to insider information that exists legally. The habit: after marking any past paper, read that paper's report for the questions you dropped. You'll find your error has a name, a frequency, and usually a one-line fix — and you'll start predicting the traps before you sit them.
Habit 2 will name your leaky skills; the practice portal has graded sets to re-test them — differentiation, integration, algebraic manipulation and more, at A-Level standard.
Open A-Level practice →Bring a marked past paper to a free assessment and I'll classify your dropped marks into the four buckets — you'll leave knowing your personal A–A* gap.
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