How to Prepare and manage Year 10

So here we are, back in September as brand new Year 10 students ready to start your GCSE courses.

As a teacher with over 22 years of experience as both a Head of Year and Head of department, our tutor, Gareth,  suggests that spending just 900 seconds each day from the start of Year 10 and your GCSE’s will in fact be something that your future self will be very thankful for on the 4^th May 2026 when your GCSE exams will begin.

The Starting Gun for Year 10

 Imagine for a moment that when you return to school on the 3^rd September 2024 that the starting gun has sounded at the start of your GCSE journey, as mentioned above, you have a finite date to aim for – the 4^th May 2026. This is 86 weeks and 6 days away from your first day back as a Year 10.

You will often hear teachers tell you that your GCSE’s are a marathon and not a sprint, which is one way to look at it – after all, you do have Year 10 and most of Year 11 ( and those 86 weeks ) to prepare for your exams.

However, rather than agreeing with the conventional view that your GCSE’s are a marathon and not a sprint, I want to share a slightly different perspective and suggest that your GCSE’s are actually more like trying to sprint a marathon.

 You have so much content to cover, new knowledge to be taught, new writing techniques to learn and revise as well as having to come to grips with finite time limits per question and per exam paper.

However, as I have mentioned above, spending just 900 seconds a day each day in Year 10 will help you build and reinforce the good habits. This will enable you to be kinder to your future self at the end of Year 10 with your end of Year exams, as well as preparing for your Year 11 mock exams and final exams.

GCSEs – an exciting time

The start of your GCSE’s is an exciting time, every single student, in every single one of your GCSE classes will be in exactly the same situation as you are – neither you, or any of the other students in your lessons will ever have studied GCSE English, GCSE Maths, GCSE History or any other GCSE or BTEC course you are studying.

This is a really important message for you to take time to process – at the start of Year 10, you are in exactly the same situation as every other student…..but using those 900 seconds each day over the Summer holidays could help ensure you do in fact start in a better place than most students.

Returning to the sprinting a marathon analogy, think about for a minute the most successful sprinter of all time – Usain Bolt. He won 8 gold medals including consecutive 100m and 200m gold medals at three Olympic Games across 12 years. He would train for four years in preparation for the Olympic games, four years preparation day in and day out for an event that lasted less than 10 seconds.

As you sit here, you are in a similar position, except rather than having a four year cycle to prepare for the Olympics, you have a 86 week countdown – because rather like Thanos in the Avengers Infinity Saga – your GCSE’s are inevitable and regardless of how much or little work or effort you put in over those 86 weeks, you will be sitting your exams come the 4^th May 2026.

Make the Difference

So what can you do that will make the difference ?

The golden thread that is running through this article is ‘900 seconds’ – this is very deliberate. 900 seconds in 15 minutes – which is about the same amount of time it would take you to watch 5 full videos on TikTok.

I am absolutely convinced every single one of you reading this article right now could watch 5 less videos each day on TikTok. The author James Clear explains that if you can get 1% better each day at something for a whole year, by the end of that year you will be 37% better than you were at the start of the process.

Those 900 seconds are the key, 15 minutes can either fly by or seem like an eternity depending on what we are doing. If as I am suggesting you give up 15 minutes each day of your summer holidays to help you prepare for your GCSE’s in Year 10 you might think that is way too much time. On the other hand, if I were to tell you that you were only allowed on your mobile phone / tablet / games console or PC for only 15 minutes each day you would rightly argue that is nowhere near enough time.

We make time for what is important to us

One of my favourite quotes is “We make time for what is important to us” – we always seem to be able to find time to scroll social media or play on our consoles, you need to find time now to prepare for your GCSE’s and start building those great habits and the best way to do this is by using the ‘Seinfeld Method’ created by Jerry Seinfeld.

Your parents might know Jerry Seinfeld from the show Seinfeld, you probably know him as Barry the Bee from Bee Movie. He is one of the most successful and wealthy comedians in the world. He was once asked the secret of his success and he explained that he bought a massive wall calendar with all 365 days of the year on it. Every day he would wake up with one goal, the write a joke – it didn’t matter if the joke was funny or not, what mattered was the process and the discipline behind it.

Then each day he would put a tick on the wall chart. He would repeat this each day, building up the ticks, explaining it acted as motivation to not break the streak of consecutive days. If he did end up breaking the streak for some reason – the motivation was to beat the streak the next time.

So how can you use this idea to help you prepare ?

Start by asking your teachers what topics you are covering in your GCSE subjects – you will also be able to find this information out from the options booklets your school will have created for you as well as the Curriculum pages from your schools own website.

Armed with this information you can start to prepare for next year. For example – in English you will be studying a Shakespeare play as well as reading a 19^th Century novel. There will definitely be a film adaptation of whatever play or novel you are studying which you could watch over the summer holidays which would take up a huge chunk of consecutive 900 seconds to help you build that habit streak.

In GCSE History for example you could find out what topics you are studying and use that help you find a plethora of revision videos and documentaries on YouTube on your topics.

Another great tip is to find out which textbooks you will be using in your GCSE subjects – every single year, thousands of Year 11 students sell their old textbooks on Amazon with you often being able to pick up a textbook which would cost £15-£20 brand new for less than £5 in many cases.

Websites like www.getrevising.co.uk are fantastic places where students upload and share their revision materials for pretty much every single exam board, exam paper and topic you can think of and of course, the brilliant www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/secondary website is one of the best one-stop hubs for your GCSE’s.

Take the opportunity now for the best possible result.

Although, it might seem that your GCSE’s are a lifetime away, in reality, in the words of White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland – there is so much to do and so little time to do it. In the blink of an eye it will be the 4^th May 2026. Finally, I’ll leave you with the words of one of the most successful NFL players of all time – Neon Deion Sanders – “Everyone wants to be successful until the see what it takes”. You have the opportunity now, to show that you have what it takes to get ahead and ensure you are in the best possible place for the start of Year 10. I know you can do it.