Most people start revising properly around Easter of Year 11. The ones who find it manageable started in Year 10 — not doing more, just doing something regularly. A few topics a week from September adds up to more than a hard push in April, and it costs you far less.

This is the hard part. It's more comfortable to redo a topic you're good at, and it feels productive. It isn't. The marks are in the two or three topics quietly costing you every paper — and you usually can't name them without checking.

Twenty minutes a day is around 100 hours across a year. Three hours every other Saturday is about 78. The daily version is less effort and it holds better, because you're revisiting things before you've forgotten them rather than after.

A paper you haven't marked against the real scheme tells you very little. Knowing you got 48 out of 80 doesn't help. Knowing you dropped six marks on one assessment objective does.

A mock in November is a list of things to fix, with six months to fix them in. That's a useful thing to have.