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What you will be able to do
By the end of this tutorial you will have a six-week timetable. It tells you which paper to sit on which day, when to mark it, and when to fix what it showed you. You will also have a simple way to check, each week, whether the plan is working.
The idea is simple. In the final weeks, past papers are the clearest guide to what the exam asks and how it is marked. But a paper only helps if you mark it honestly and act on the result. So this timetable plans the marking and the fixing, not just the sitting.
What you need
Build the timetable in seven steps
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List every paper and its length
Write down each paper you will sit, its number and its duration, in exam-date order. Take the durations from the current syllabus, not from memory. This list decides everything else, because papers differ a lot in length.
Tip. If you are unsure whether you sit Paper 5 or Paper 6 in a science, ask your teacher now, not in week 5. -
Count your real hours
Look at a normal school week and write down the hours you can actually give to revision. Be honest: an hour you planned and skipped damages the whole plan. Keep one day a week free.
Tip. A smaller plan you keep beats a bigger plan you abandon in week 2. -
Turn each paper into a session
A session is the paper itself, then marking with the mark scheme, then fixing every lost mark. As a planning rule, allow twice the paper’s length for the whole session. A 1 hour 15 minute paper becomes a 2 hour 30 minute session.
Tip. Marking can go on the next day, but never in a later week. -
Split the six weeks into three phases
Weeks 1 and 2: one diagnostic paper per subject, then topic repair. Weeks 3 and 4: full sets of papers under timed conditions. Weeks 5 and 6: a second round of full sets, in the order you will sit them, using your newest unused papers.
Tip. For the diagnostic, pick the longest written paper in each subject. It covers the most topics, so it shows the most gaps. -
Place the sessions, longest first
Put the longest sessions on your longest free days, then fill the gaps with shorter papers and topic repair. Give your weakest subject the most repair time, and give subjects examined first their full sets first.
Tip. Write each session into a real day and time. A session with no slot tends not to happen. -
Mark strictly and log every lost mark
Mark with the official mark scheme as if it were someone else’s script. For each lost mark, write the topic and one of three causes. Recall: you did not know it. Method: you knew it but missed the working or wording. Application: you could not use it in a new setting.
Tip. A cause tells you what to fix. A score alone does not. -
Review every Sunday
Count the lost marks in the error log by topic and cause. Put next week’s repair time on the biggest group. If a subject has stopped leaking marks in a topic, move that time elsewhere.
Tip. If one topic fills half the log, give it a whole repair session next week before sitting another full paper.
A worked timetable, from paper list to week 6
Here is the method applied to one example: Sam, an illustrative student sitting Extended Maths 0580, Chemistry 0620 and Physics 0625, with Paper 6 in both sciences. Sam has 12 hours a week for these three subjects, 72 hours in total. Chemistry is the weakest, and the science papers come before Maths.
Steps 1 and 3: the paper list and sessions. Each session is twice the paper’s length.
| Paper | Sit | Session |
|---|---|---|
| Maths 0580 Paper 2 (non-calculator) | 2 h | 4 h |
| Maths 0580 Paper 4 (calculator) | 2 h | 4 h |
| Chemistry 0620 Paper 2 (multiple choice) | 45 min | 1 h 30 min |
| Chemistry 0620 Paper 4 (theory) | 1 h 15 min | 2 h 30 min |
| Chemistry 0620 Paper 6 (alternative to practical) | 1 h | 2 h |
| Physics 0625 Papers 2, 4 and 6 | 45 min, 1 h 15 min, 1 h | 1 h 30 min, 2 h 30 min, 2 h |
Paper lengths from Cambridge’s syllabuses for 0580 (2025–2027), 0620 (2026–2028) and 0625 (2026–2028), checked 15 October 2026. The session length is our planning rule, not a Cambridge figure.
So one full set takes 8 hours of sessions in Maths and 6 hours in each science. All of Sam’s Maths sessions use papers set under the current 2025–2027 syllabus.
Steps 4 and 5: the six weeks. Every week below adds up to 12 hours.
The totals. Maths gets 26.5 hours, Chemistry 24 and Physics 21.5. Maths gets the most because its papers are the longest. Chemistry, the weakest subject, gets the most repair time outside full papers: 9.5 hours, against 7 for Physics and 6.5 for Maths.
The papers to set aside. Sam needs five Maths papers: three Paper 2 and two Paper 4. Each science needs seven: three Paper 4, two Paper 2 and two Paper 6. That is 19 papers. Each subject’s newest set is kept for the second round: week 5 for the sciences, week 6 for Maths.
Troubleshooting
Where to go next
Start with the paper list today. Once you know how many sessions you need, the rest of the timetable follows.