For many students, even the most able, the hardest thing about revising for exams is getting started. In my own student days, I could spend hours drafting immaculately colour-coded revision timetables and shopping for luminous highlighter pens. I would then tidy my room so that my physical environment reflected my focused mental state.

And then I would go out and do any of the many things that were more instantly gratifying than memorising the components of the alimentary canal.

I was capable of keeping up this rigorous routine for weeks!

For those with a tendency to procrastinate, the greatest benefit of taking an Easter revision course is that it gets them started and enables them to discover exactly where they stand and how much work they have to do before the exams in June.

However, a good revision course will achieve much more than this, and will benefit different individuals in a variety of ways. Firstly, it must be tailored to the needs of the student.

There is little point in spending time on units for which the exams have already been taken, or on topic areas that they are comfortable with.

After all, a week is a not a long time in which to review an entire course — it is crucial that the student is able to target those areas in which he or she stands to benefit most.

Students should therefore complete their pre-course questionnaires carefully and fully to enable the course tutors to gear the course towards them and target their specific needs and weaknesses.

Secondly, examination practice and technique are vital. The classes will cover the salient aspects of the course and students will familiarise themselves with the essential material, but understanding how to apply what they know in an examination to gain maximum marks is crucial.

Unfortunately, in many schools, pressure of time and large class sizes make it very difficult for teachers to teach the students how to maximise their grades in exams. A good Easter revision course will include plenty of past paper practice. The scripts will then be marked and annotated with reference to examiners’ reports and mark schemes in order that the students can understand how to deploy their knowledge and understanding most profitably.

Lastly, a revision course should be stimulating, fun even.

Students are taken out of their day-to-day study environments and can engage with the work free of the usual peer pressure.

A different teacher, with a fresh face offering a new perspective, can invigorate even the most jaded student, and I have found that the class dynamic in these courses is far more active and engaged than in most standard A-Level courses.

Students nearing the end of a GCSE, AS or A2 course often find their enthusiasm for the subject renewed by attending a revision course.

Their confidence restored, each year a number write to us in August to say how much they began to enjoy their studies again after Easter!

Joel Roderick, Academic Regsitrar, Oxford Tutorial College