Boosting the Grade at GCSE English: It’s Never Too Late 

Some students reach the final months of GCSE English sure they're "just not good at English". Years of feedback have told them what they can't do, and another general revision session won't change their mind.

You can give them a sharper way in. You'll see where marks are won and lost across the language and literature papers, and how to turn the assessment objectives into plain words students can aim at. From there you can teach them to pick short quotations and say something about them rather than retell the text. Students who spend too long on a four-mark question and never reach the big one are giving marks away, and you'll know how to stop that.

There's also advice on adapting all of this for students with SEND, and on simple ways families can help at home, like asking their child to explain a quotation over tea.