Using the summer holidays to get ahead: tips for students

The summer holidays are a chance to relax and take a break from the pressures of school each year - and it’s really important that students use this time to decompress and re-charge their batteries.

But if you’re heading into a crucial exam year at school, you might want to use the summer holidays to ensure you’re on track for September; particularly if you’ll be going into Year 11 or Year 13.

The summer break is a great opportunity to consolidate what you’ve learned in the first half of your course; to recap and refresh your memory, and to ensure everything is in order so you can head into the new school year confident you’re up-to-date and ready to tackle new material.

Here are three ways you can make sure you’re using the summer holidays to their full potential…

Organise your notes

It’s easy for notes made during the busy school year to be lost or misplaced - or you may have missed out on making some notes in the first place! It’s normal for your notes to have gaps, or to be a little scrappy, at the end of the year. 

But the summer break is a great chance to go back over the notes you made and ensure they are up-to-date, neat, and complete. You don’t want to be finding out for the first time in the Spring Term of your exam year that the notes you made two years ago are illegible or missing; so use the summer to get yourself organised and to either digitise your notes or gather them neatly together in a proper file or notepad. You’ll thank yourself later!

Fill in any gaps

Maybe you missed some school due to a bout of COVID; or maybe you missed some teaching mid-course if you had a supply teacher for a few weeks. It’s easy to end up with gaps in your notes - so download the course syllabus from the exam board website and check which topics you should have covered by now. If any are missing, then have a look through your textbook or online resources to fill in the gaps - or make a note to ask your teacher about it next year!

Read outside your subject

If you’re headed into Year 13 next year, you may well be thinking of applying for university over the autumn term. If you’ve chosen the course you want to apply for, the summer holiday before Year 13 is a brilliant opportunity to delve deeper into your chosen subject so you can demonstrate your outside reading in your personal statement. Universities want to see a passion for your course; so show them that you’ve dedicated your own time, outside of school, to finding out more as an independent learner.

Above all, don’t forget to relax! The summer holidays should be a time to take a break from the pressures of school, so the work you do should be aimed at helping you enter the new year feeling calm and in control.

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