"How much work should I actually be doing?" is one of the questions students ask me most, usually somewhere in Year 12. The number itself is easy to give. What goes into those hours, and whether they really happen, is where most students come unstuck.
This is what I tell the students I work with, based on years as an A Level Maths course leader in a sixth-form college and a lot of tutoring since. It's a guide rather than a rule, and every student is a bit different, but the pattern is very consistent.
The short answer
Four to five hours a week of independent study, on top of lessons, is what most schools recommend for A Level Maths, and in my experience that's about right. If you're already working at an A or B, that's roughly what it takes just to keep the grade you have. Add your lessons and it's around eight to ten hours a week on maths in total.
If you want more than that, you need more than that. The students I've taught who got an A* were doing five to six hours a week as a minimum, throughout the whole two-year course, not just in the run-up to the exams. To move up a grade, plan on something like six hours a week, from the start of the year.
Where the time comes from
Four or five hours a week on one subject can sound like a lot when you've just come from GCSE. It's less daunting once you see how your timetable has changed.
| GCSE | A level | |
|---|---|---|
| Lessons a week | Around 25 hours | More like 13, because you're only studying three subjects |
| Who decides what you do | The teacher, for most of the week | You, for a big chunk of it |
The rest of the school week is free periods, and shared across three subjects that works out at roughly four hours each. In other words, the time the course expects you to spend on your own is mostly already sitting in your timetable. So it isn't really much more work than GCSE. Far more of it is independent, though, and a lot of students don't realise how much of their result comes down to that until the first set of mocks.
The gap between what's recommended and what's set
This is the part I most want you to know. Your school will probably say A Level Maths needs four to five hours a week outside lessons, then set something like an hour to an hour and a half of homework. Some set two hours a fortnight, and I've come across some that set almost nothing.
The school says four hours, sets one, and you're left with no idea what to do with the remaining three.
Most students, reasonably enough, do the one hour that's set and assume that's the job done. Nobody has told them otherwise, and nothing they're handed back tells them otherwise either. The rest is left to you, and nobody checks it.
Left to choose, most students pick topics they're comfortable with, or whatever the teacher covered that week. The work they choose doesn't match what they actually need.
Platforms that check only the final answer can't see your working. They tend to focus on early-stage skills on a single topic, not exam problem solving.
In my experience, filling the time without a plan rarely works unless you're already very high-performing and very self-motivated.
It's quite possible to do every piece of online homework you're set and still not be ready for an exam question.
What changed at my old college. When I took over as A Level Maths course leader at my previous college, our results were in the bottom 10% nationally. One of the most important changes we made was a structured four-hour weekly homework routine, with meaningful tasks, checked by teachers every week. Within three years we were in the top 10% nationally. Plenty of other things changed too, but the structured independent study was a major part of it.
What should fill the hours
If your school sets less than four hours, the rest is up to you. Here is what I'd suggest as the bare minimum week while you're at school or college:
Do it properly, and do it first.
Covering everything you've done so far in the course, not just this half term.
One topic that is costing you marks, picked from your mixed questions, a test or a mock, and worked on until it isn't.
That comes to between three and four and a half hours, around the four-hour benchmark. The chart below shows how that sits alongside lessons, and what more ambitious targets tend to look like.
These are guides based on our experience, not rules, and the right amount varies from student to student. Lesson time varies between schools too.
The weak-topic hour is where textbook exercises earn their place: a chapter on one topic is the right tool for fixing that topic. The mixed exam questions are what tell you which topic to pick.
Why mixed exam questions matter
A textbook exercise on trigonometry tells you before you start that every question is about trigonometry. Even a "mixed exercise" at the end of a chapter is mixed within one topic. That's fine for learning a method, but an exam doesn't work like that.
| Current-topic practice only | A weekly mixed set of exam questions | |
|---|---|---|
| Which bit of maths to use | Decided for you by the chapter | Yours to work out, as in the exam |
| Topics from three to six months ago | Never looked at again, quietly forgotten | Kept from going cold |
| When a weak spot shows up | When revision starts or a mock turns up, usually several at once | Within a week or two, not in February |
The hardest part of a lot of exam questions is working out which bit of maths they want, and a chapter exercise never asks you to do that. When I was a course leader, the fix was a weekly mixed set of exam questions covering everything taught so far, older topics included. I still set the same kind of task for the students I tutor.
Exam questions also get you used to setting out your working in the way the mark scheme wants, which is its own skill. Our guides to A Level Maths exam technique and what "fully justify" means on AQA papers go into that.
If you would rather someone set the questions and go through them with you, that is what the Exam Practice classes at The A Level Maths Tutor are for. Once a week, in a live online group of up to six, you work through mixed exam questions with an experienced A Level Maths teacher and learn how the mark scheme awards each mark. There are classes for Year 12 and Year 13, at £25 a week with no long-term contract, and Premium membership here is included.
Making the hours happen
Knowing what to do is half of it. The other half is making sure it actually gets done, week after week, for two years.
Plan it, don't fit it in
In my experience, students rarely reach four or five hours a week if they just do some work whenever they feel like it. The ones who manage it well almost always plan it.
The same times every week, treated the way you'd treat a lesson. Free periods are an obvious place to start.
Alarms make a clear distinction between forgetting the homework and actively choosing not to do it. Once "I forgot" isn't available, most students do it.
It makes the work more enjoyable, and it's harder to skip a session when someone else is expecting you.
Plan for five hours, every week. If you only manage three at first, don't give yourself too hard a time: three is a real improvement on one, and that counts. Just don't let three become the new target. Keep planning for five, and keep closing the gap.
Track the real hours
Students regularly overestimate how long they've spent studying when they haven't been actively tracking it. One student I worked with:
An evening with maths open on the desk just feels like an evening of maths.
They weren't being dishonest. The simplest fix is a timer that only runs while you're actually working: stop it when you check your phone, start it again when you pick your pen back up. Most students are surprised by the first week's total.
Quality over hours
Hours on their own don't tell you much. "I sit at it for two or three hours and don't get as much out of it" is something I hear a lot, and it's a very common pattern: short bursts of work with long gaps between them.
- Put the phone in another room, not face down on the desk.
- Clear the desk of anything that tends to pull your attention away.
- Finish with a two-minute written summary of what you did and what you got stuck on. It keeps you honest about the session, and the "stuck on" part is exactly what to take to your teacher or tutor.
If you're doing more than three A levels
| If you're taking | What it means for your week |
|---|---|
| Four A levels, or three plus a BTEC | Something like ten hours a week of extra work, on top of an already full load |
| Maths and Further Maths | A slightly different case, because the two support each other. Even so, about eight to nine hours a week of independent study across the two |
When I worked on admissions at college, we discouraged students from taking four unless they were working at grade 8s and 9s across the board. A fourth subject stretches your time too thin, and no university requires four A levels: offers are made on three. I've seen students miss an A*AA offer because they took four and came out with AAAA, when the hours that went into the fourth would very likely have turned one of those As into the A* they needed.
If you're taking four, you have to accept you'll need considerably more time than friends taking three to get similar grades. The students who don't put it in tend to spread themselves too thinly and underperform in all of their subjects.
A quick self-check
If you're not sure whether your week is doing the job, try this.
Where we fit in
Nothing here replaces independent study, and nothing we offer is meant to. What we can do is make the hours easier to fill well.
A free account at A Level Maths Academy gives you past papers for every board, exam questions by topic and flashcards, which covers a good share of the week above. Premium membership adds live online lessons, recorded so you can catch up if you miss one, along with predicted papers for the timed practice later in the year. See what each includes.
If what you need is someone looking at your working every week, that's what a tutor is for. The A Level Maths Tutor runs 1-1 tuition and small Exam Practice groups, and Premium membership here is included with both.
Got a question this didn't answer?
Ask me directly and I'll reply by email. The questions students ask most are how these guides get written.
Written by
Andy Parker, Lead Tutor
I run A Level Maths Academy and The A Level Maths Tutor, and teach the course every week. These guides come from the questions students actually ask me, usually more than once. More about me.
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