Why is A Level Biology so tricky?

If you’re a parent of a child who’s studying A Level Biology, you have probably seen them reading a massive textbook, and lugging it back and forth between home and school.

And it’s true – A Level Biology is incredibly content heavy. Students are not only expected to build upon their knowledge of the GCSE curriculum, but to learn a great swathe of new information, from kidneys to karyotypes, to the Krebs cycle. The course is designed to test the student’s ability to retain information, as well as higher-level scientific thinking. This equips students with the knowledge and skills to study sciences or medicine at university.

But simply learning the content is perhaps the ‘easy’ bit in A Level Biology. What sets the A Level apart from the GCSE, is that exam technique and detailed knowledge of past papers and mark schemes is absolutely critical to obtain an excellent mark. Not only this, but students are also expected to learn technical laboratory skills, showcasing these techniques under exam conditions. With all of this in mind, where should students start, and how should they revise to ensure they ace the exams?

Start with the specification and revise only what you really need to know

Every exam board and every subject at A Level will have a ‘specification’. This document is primarily aimed at teachers as it shows them everything they need to teach their students. However, students can also access these for free on the exam board website, and they can be incredibly helpful for revision.

When students are creating their notes for a topic or revising for a test, they should refer to the specification to see exactly what they need to know. I often advise students to write down a specification point, e.g., ‘understand the differences and similarities between eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells’ and then add their notes on this particular point below.

The textbooks that exam boards provide often go into levels of detail beyond the exams. Unless your child is being invited for medical interviews, learning extra information is not necessary, and it only adds to the stress of memorising the course. Sticking to the specification will ensure your child knows exactly what the exam board is asking of them for each topic and should focus their revision efforts only to the information they really need.

Past papers, past papers…and more past papers

For GCSEs, it’s usually recommended that you do past papers for each subject, but most of the time you can get away with only doing one or two, because it’s more about memory than exam technique.

A Level is different. Many students will spend countless hours memorising the course, to only get a C or a D in a mock exam, leaving them feeling demotivated and unconfident. There’s no ‘quick fix’ to get a good mark in A Level Biology, and past papers need to become the student’s best friend. Students should complete a minimum of 10 past papers for each exam, but I would recommend more.

Even if their schoolteacher is giving them some for homework, they should be completing additional ones in their spare time. But completing exam questions is not quite enough. Students should also become familiar with mark schemes and should spend a lot of time going through their answers and adding key words and phrases from the mark schemes to their notes. Students will often write good answers in exams but miss out on marks because they haven’t used key words. Mark schemes will show the exact key words, terminology, and phrasing that is needed.

For example, let’s say there was a 4-mark question asking to, ‘describe and explain the effect of temperature on enzyme activity.’

Student 1 says: ‘As temperature increases, so does the activity. This is because things move around more, and the reaction happens quicker. When the temperature gets too high, the enzymes die, and the reaction stops.’

This student has got the general gist of the question, but they are not including key words and they have used some incorrect terminology (the word ‘die’ should not be included as this only relates to living things). They have also only written 3 sentences, and we generally need one sentence/point per mark. This student would probably only get 1 out of 4 marks.

Student 2 says: ‘As the temperature increases, so does the kinetic energy. This means that the enzymes and substrates are moving around more, meaning there will be more successful collisions between the substrate and the active site of the enzyme, leading to a faster rate of reaction. Beyond the optimum temperature, the bonds in the active site of the enzyme break- meaning the enzyme is denatured. This means that the enzyme’s active site is no longer complementary to the substrate, meaning fewer successful collisions, and a lower rate of reaction.

I have underlined all the key words in this answer. You can see that student 2 knows the exact key words to include, and they have practiced plenty of questions, so they also know the difference between the command words ‘describe’ and ‘explain.’ This answer would have scored full marks. Exam boards also like comparative words ending in ‘er’, like, ‘faster’, ‘longer’, ‘greater’, which this student has also included. Students may find Maths, experimental, and ‘suggest’ questions in Biology tricky, but as with everything, practice makes perfect, and this comes by completing past paper questions.

Find a revision strategy that works

Students often struggle to know exactly how to revise, so it’s important that they start to figure this out early. Some students may be either visual or text-based learners. For example, some may prefer to revise from long notes, whereas others might prefer spider diagrams or pictures. It’s important to do ‘active’ revision – simply reading notes and highlighting them is not going to help with longer-term memory.

Instead, students could turn their notes into diagrams, or pretend they’re teaching a topic to someone aloud. Mixing it up really helps and ensures the student doesn’t get bored. There are plenty of revision videos on YouTube, flashcards on Quizlet, and revision guides with summary notes (CGP are particularly good). As they get closer to exams, creating a detailed revision timetable will help them organise their time and ensures they will cover everything they need to. For example, ‘on Monday from 12-3pm, I will revise cells and magnification in Biology and answer paper 1 (2019) under timed conditions.’

And finally…breathe!

A Levels are tough, and your child will need regular breaks. Hard work is important, but focusing their efforts to the strategies above will ensure the student is concentrating on the things that really matter. When they get into their final exams, they should take a deep breath, remember that they really know their stuff, and they should remember to think like an examiner”.  Good luck!