Week beginning Monday 26 October 2026 A student can know the plot, the vocabulary, the historical context and the difference between a metaphor and a simile, and still lose marks because their answer speaks the wrong dialect. I once watched a very capable student write a paragraph about a character with real insight, then leave the examiner to do the work of finding the argument, the evidence and the explanation. The ideas were there; the signposts were not. It was a little l

Half term arrives with a familiar question: should we be revising, resting, or quietly panicking about the November mocks? (Often all three seem to be happening at once.) The good news is that this week does not need to become a revision boot camp. It can be a genuine reset: a little structure, some carefully chosen practice and enough time away from the books for a young brain to breathe. I’ve seen students make more progress in a few focused sessions than in a whole day of

There is a particular moment in October when the school year stops feeling new. The timetable has been folded, unfolded and eventually crushed into the bottom of a bag. The novelty of fresh stationery has faded. The first essays, tests and homework have come back with their small but meaningful hieroglyphics of feedback: “develop this”, “check your tense”, “more precise”, “show your working” (sigh). This is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to pay attention. For Year 11 a

There is a particular moment in every exam season when a perfectly intelligent student stares at a revision timetable as though it has personally betrayed them. French vocabulary is scattered across five notebooks. An English essay is half-written beside a mug of cold tea. A Drama monologue is being rehearsed in the kitchen, although the family cat remains unconvinced by the emotional climax. Meanwhile, a parent is asking, with increasing desperation: “What exactly should we

There is a particular moment in every exam season when the kitchen table disappears beneath revision cards, half-empty mugs of tea and a pencil case that seems to contain everything except a working pencil. I know this because I have lived it. More than once, I have approached revision with the confidence of a Cambridge scholar and the organisational skills of a startled squirrel. I colour-coded my notes, sharpened three pencils, made an ambitious timetable: and then spent 25

I still remember the smell of the old library at Cambridge, a heady mix of damp stone, ancient parchment, and the distinct, slightly metallic scent of a radiators-on-too-high radiator. (Sigh.) It was a world I had dreamed of, yet when I was seventeen, sitting in my bedroom with a half-eaten packet of chocolate digestives and a flickering computer screen, that dream felt about as attainable as a seat on a Mars-bound rocket. Applying to Oxford or Cambridge is a marathon of the

It is 7.30pm on a Tuesday. The kitchen smells faintly of overdone toast, a half-empty mug of tea has gone cold beside the laptop, and a teenager is staring at a French verb table as if it has personally offended them. There are highlighters everywhere: neon pink, electric blue, a yellow so bright it appears faintly radioactive. But is any revision actually happening? Not quite. We have reached that familiar point where “revising” has become synonymous with looking anxiously a

I remember the particular atmosphere of exam panic: a cold mug of tea, three sharpened pencils, a textbook opened to the wrong page and a packet of biscuits slowly disappearing beside the revision notes. Somewhere in the background, a radiator clanks with the confidence of a metronome. You have been “revising” for an hour, but if someone asked you to explain the subjunctive, analyse a quotation or define proxemics, your mind would produce only a small, echoing tumbleweed. Fam

I remember the particular atmosphere of exam panic: a cold mug of tea, three sharpened pencils, a textbook opened to the wrong page and a packet of biscuits slowly disappearing beside the revision notes. Somewhere in the background, a radiator clanks with the confidence of a metronome. You have been “revising” for an hour, but if someone asked you to explain the subjunctive, analyse a quotation or define proxemics, your mind would produce only a small, echoing tumbleweed. Fam

There is a particular atmosphere that descends on a household when exams begin to loom. The kitchen table becomes a command centre. Revision cards multiply overnight. Someone buys three different highlighter colours. A half-eaten packet of digestive biscuits appears beside a French vocabulary list, and the family dog develops an impressive ability to look concerned. I know the feeling. During my own studies, I spent many an afternoon surrounded by books, cold tea and the slig

There is a particular kind of silence that descends over a household during exam season. It is not peaceful silence. It is the silence of a teenager staring at a blank page, a parent hovering near the kettle, and an unopened revision guide quietly gathering dust beside a half-eaten biscuit. Somewhere, a printer is groaning. Somewhere else, a student is wondering whether the French subjunctive is a genuine grammatical structure or an elaborate international prank (sigh). I kno

There is a particular kind of panic that arrives at 8.17pm on a Sunday evening. It begins with a teenager announcing, “I’ve got an exam tomorrow,” continues with the frantic opening of three revision guides, and ends with someone eating dry cereal over a geography textbook while insisting they are “basically fine”. I know this scene well: not only as a tutor, but as a former student who once believed that highlighting an entire page counted as learning (it did not). The good

There is a distinct, faintly haunting fragrance to high-stakes exam season. It smells of slightly scorched kettle elements, frantic highlighter ink, and the quiet despair of a stale McVitie’s digestive biscuit consumed at 11:42 PM. (Oh, the glamour of academia!) I remember sitting at my own battered pine desk years ago: surrounded by towering anthologies of French literature, coffee cups of dubious vintage, and an unreasonable number of colour-coded index cards: wondering if

I distinctly remember a Tuesday afternoon about three years ago. I was sitting at my desk: my third cup of Earl Grey cooling rapidly by my elbow: staring at a screen where a very bright, very panicked sixteen-year-old was convinced that the French subjunctive was a personal vendetta designed by 17th-century grammarians specifically to ruin his life. He was at a B. He wanted an A*. He was also, quite understandably, currently experiencing the academic equivalent of a stalling

I remember the smell of it vividly: burnt toast and existential dread. It was the morning of my own mock exams years ago, and I was sitting at the kitchen table, staring blankly at a plate of sourdough (which I’d toasted for far too long) while the low hum of the refrigerator seemed to mock my lack of preparation. I had the notes. I had the highlighters. I even had the fancy fountain pen. Yet, the "engine" of my brain felt like it was stalling in mid-winter. We’ve all been th

I’ll never forget the first time I had to give a formal presentation at Cambridge. There I was, surrounded by oak-panelled walls and the ghosts of literary giants, clutching a handful of notes that were shaking so hard they sounded like a crisp packet in a quiet cinema. I had the ideas, at least, I thought I did, but my voice seemed to have taken an unscheduled holiday to the South of France. I squeaked, I stammered, and at one point, I’m fairly certain I forgot how to breath

I remember sitting in a drafty Cambridge library, staring at a stack of Dickens novels that looked more like bricks than literature, nursing a lukewarm Earl Grey that had long since lost its charm. My own essays at the time? They were… fine. They were "B" material, solid, reliable, but lacking that elusive je ne sais quoi that makes an examiner sit up and reach for the red pen of destiny. It’s a common dilemma. You know the plot of Macbeth inside out. You can quote Inspector

I remember a particular Sunday evening during my time at Cambridge. The air was thick with the scent of old parchment, damp wool, and: rather significantly: the slightly burnt aroma of a second-tier supermarket digestive biscuit. I was staring at a stack of Spanish literature that seemed, quite frankly, to be written in a code I’d forgotten how to crack. My "engine" was stalling. I had the fuel (too much caffeine), but the machinery of my revision process was clunking, grindi

I remember sitting in the hallowed, slightly drafty halls of Cambridge University, staring at a stack of medieval French literature that seemed specifically designed to make me question every life choice I’d ever made. The air smelled of old parchment, damp stone, and the collective anxiety of several hundred overachievers. It was there, amidst the frantic scribbling and the excessive consumption of strong tea, that I realized something vital: excellence isn't about how many

There is a specific, low-frequency hum that enters a household when the 11 plus exam prep season officially kicks off. It’s a sound somewhere between a boiling kettle and a distant siren: a mixture of parental anxiety, a child’s quiet confusion over non-verbal reasoning patterns, and the rustle of a thousand practice papers. I remember my own time at Cambridge (sigh). While the spires were beautiful and the libraries smelled of ancient parchment and high expectations, the pre