If you were disappointed by your Year-12 exam results, you’re not alone. Many A-level Biology students have a bit of a shock at this point, but you still have the opportunity to turn things around.

1. Put your result in context

An anxious looking little dog in a red hoody — Don’t panic, let’s think about this

Why did you expect to get a better grade than you did? Remember not everyone is going to get an A or A*.

How did your friends do?

Comparing yourself to real-world people rather than imagined ideals can be really helpful. Did you do better or worse than people who you thought were at the same level?

How did you do at GCSE?

Students who didn’t excel at GCSE always struggle. Most students who get 6s and 7s at GCSE end up with a C grade at A level. Getting a B or higher isn’t impossible but should be considered unusual, and of course some will get a D or below.

If this is you, then getting a C grade is great!

You can aspire to do better, but you should also be proud about what you’ve already achieved. Don’t beat yourself up about not being the rare exception who beats the odds to a top grade.

Starting A level without a strong foundation at GCSE literally makes it more difficult, however clever you may be.

Remember it’s possible to do all the right things but still not get an A*.

Is it a disaster?

It’s definitely not a disaster. Whatever happens I promise you will have unexpected opportunities and interesting events ahead of you. Life doesn’t always go the way you expect, but that’s just the nature of things.

The question right now is whether you think you can get a higher grade next year, and are motivated to do so. In which case let’s look at how you can achieve that.

2. How can you improve your grade

If you do do the same things again this year, you will get the same result again.

You need to make big changes if you want to do better. Just aiming to ‘work harder’ isn’t likely to make a huge difference unless you completely slacked off in Year 12 for reasons that are now past.

You will need to catch up the things you missed from the last year, at the same time as learning new content. And the new content will be more difficult for you than for those students who have strong foundational knowledge from Year 12.

The most important Year 12 topics for you to catch up as quickly as possible are:

▢ Biological molecules
▢ Movement of water and ions across membranes
▢ Nature of the genetic code
▢ Protein structure

To change your learning habits, you will need a structured approach. But you first need to be absolutely honest with yourself about what went wrong.

3. What went wrong

Well, what went wrong was this: you didn’t write the correct answers to the exam questions. But why?

Beware of false narratives

Many students say that they understand the content but just didn’t have good exam technique. There’s a whole industry of people selling the supposed secrets of ‘exam technique’.

But in Tom’s experience (having helped a lot of students improve their grades!), 90% of the problem is simply that the students simply didn’t understand the content well enough.

Have you got any of these thoughts running through your mind?

“I’m an A-grade student, how could this happen?” - Many hard-working students get straight As at GCSE by relying on memorisation. This strategy doesn’t work at A-level, catching out a lot of previously high-performing students. You’re only an A-grade student if you get an A grade, and to do that you will need to study in a different way.

“I didn’t understand what the exam question wanted” - Exam questions are much, much easier to understand when you have mastered the content. Examiners never try to trip students up - they write the question as clearly as they possibly can - but the questions are carefully designed to test your deep understanding and to be impossible to answer if you have just memorised information.

“I didn’t know the right keywords to use” - There is a belief that memorising a set of magical ‘keywords’ will help students excel at exams. But this is a myth - examiners are aware of this strategy and design questions to avoid this cheat-code. Every year, students write nonsensical answers to questions because they spew out all their memorised keywords and statements for that topic without realising the question is phrased differently from anything they’ve seen before. Yes you do need to use scientific terminology, but it has to be in context.

There are definitely some things that it’s helpful to learn about how to approach exam questions - this website offers free exam tips, and you will practice using them during tutorials. But the most important thing, always, is to understand the content.

Consider your known weaknesses

Old black and white photo of a steam train which has gone through a wall and fallen out of a station onto the street below — Things could be worse

As well as not understanding the content well enough, there are specific areas of weakness that can affect both your learning and final grade.

Maths and Graphs - 10% of the marks are for maths questions. That’s enough to raise someone a grade! The maths is not complicated, but if you got a 7 or below for maths at GCSE, or you dread maths questions, then it’s worth spending some time working on this area. Practicing calculations of averages, ratios, and graphs will make a big difference.

English - A-level Biology has more vocabulary than A-level English Literature. Every year, students drop marks because they dont understand the question, or because their exam answers are not written using appropriate language. You need to be clear, specific, and use technical terms. See this article for an overview.

Think about what you did last year

How many of these can you tick off?

▢ I went to every class through the year, arriving on time

▢ I always listened attentively and tried to understand what the teacher was explaining

▢ I completed all the homework exam questions without using google, AI or textbooks

▢ I worked during my “free periods”

▢ I studied every part of the course again outside class

▢ I studied outside class throughout the year, not just in the run up to exams

▢ I used effective study techniques (not just re-reading, not asking AI to explain concepts)

▢ I tried to understand concepts rather than memorising phrases

▢ When I didn’t understand something, I stopped and went back rather than just going on

▢ I practiced answering past papers under exam conditions, checking my answers against the mark schemes

Even if you had a perfectly reasonable excuse for not doing one of these things, it will have affected your grade. What do you need to change for next year?

4. Make a plan

a small dog looks determined as it starts jumping through a series of holes on an agility course — Success takes hard word and determination

It’s easy to write a list of goals - “I will study 2 hours every Tuesday and Thursday night, I will make a multi-coloured revision guide and tick items off every day” etc - but actually doing these things is difficult.

You’re only human. Making a complex plan which you’re unable to stick to will just leave you confused about what to do next, and make you feel like a failure.

Instead, focus your plan on immediate actions and ongoing habits. For example:

Immediate actions:

▢ Read the article How to Excel at A-level Biology, and at least one article about effective revision techniques

▢ Get a copy of the specification, so that you can refer to this and keep track of where you are at all times

Ongoing habits:

▢ Be a ‘good student’ - attend every class, switch your phone off, focus on learning while you’re there, and complete all your homework

▢ Work during your free periods (whoever called them ‘free’ periods should be jailed for crimes against learning)

▢ Re-study whatever you were doing one month ago, noticing links to more-recent topics

▢ Re-study whatever you were doing one year ago, noticing links to more-recent topics

▢ Value true understanding over everything else. Strive to make real sense of it all

5. Get Help

Check out the one-to-one and weekly group online tutoring; you might consider either or both. Tutorials are exam-focused and you practice writing answers in every class.

AQA and OCR A students who want to skip a grade from their Year 12 results are recommended to attend both Year 12 and Year 13 group.

This article was written by Jenny Shipway with guidance from Tom.

So your end-of-year exams didn’t go as expected … what now?