Having just received my results for GCSE Astronomy, I want to share my best advice to whoever is taking it in the following years. As a student who studied for it outside of school, I know how hard is it to prepare, whether it is due to the lack of resources or the specific mark schemes.

This is advice I wish I knew before starting my preparation.

Learning the Content

Do not copy the notes word by word straight from the textbook. I did this and never looked back at those notes ever again. This goes for every subject. If you want to actually make worthy learning material that is easy to revise from later, create mind maps/ fact files for each topic on the specification (which you can find on Edexcel’s website in the Science Sector), answering each point. This ensures that you have covered all of the specification without a doubt. I will share all my mind maps here within the next few months.

When making your mind maps, you need the correct information from the specification. Whilst I do recommend using Nigel Marshall’s GCSE Astronomy textbook, don’t use it alone as it lacks some of the correct information as well as contains excessive facts. It is important to identify and learn all that is relevant to the GCSE (although you can learn extra for fun).

Three days before my Paper 2, I discovered that StudyRocket has some more GCSE Astronomy content which you can learn from and goes into more detail for some topics.

There are some Astronomy workbooks by James Harding. These are good to test your content knowledge. However, the marks per questions and mark schemes in the books are inaccurate in comparison to the actual GCSE. Thus, I recommend to use these only to test your knowledge rather than practice question technique. For example, I would do half a chapter a day.

Coursework

If you are an independent/ studying separately from school student, beware of coursework. You must submit two observational tasks in order to be able to sit the exams. DO NOT make the mistake of realising this 3 months before they are due in. This is what happened to me and I had to conduct them in the middle of winter – when almost every day was cloudy and storms lasted for weeks.

There are different ways to submit coursework. If you take the GCSE at school, your teacher will do this for you. Otherwise, you’ll have to take a qualified online course or find a qualified teacher that can submit it officially. I had to take the course route, even though I was already learning the content by myself, just to submit the coursework.

The observational tasks that I did were A9 (Finding longitude using a shadow stick) and B11 (Demonstrate the range of objects in the Messier Catalogue). I recommend A9 as it is probably the most frequent observational task that comes up as a question in the exams. Doing the practical is the easiest way to learn the method. Other observational tasks that have come up as questions are A1, finding radiant of meteor showers, stellar magnitudes, B7, B8, A10 and A12. Ultimately, choose whichever task you want to do. You must pick one from the unaided section and one from the aided section. All the information can be found here: https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/GCSE/Astronomy/2017/Teaching-and-learning-materials/observational-skills-guide.pdf

Here is my guide for the coursework: All You Need to Know for GCSE Astronomy Coursework – Star Hunters

As mentioned above, observational tasks can come up as questions, particularly as Evaluating or Designing an Experiment 6 markers. Therefore, it is important to, at least, vaguely know something about each one. However, learn the method for A9 in detail as this isn’t something that you can just guess in an exam. Some tasks, such as B6, are largely part of the content in the spec anyways and will link to certain equations.

Practice Questions

Unfortunately, if you are studying for this GCSE outside of school, you will struggle with practice question technique. Not only is there a massive lack of practice question resources, the specific mark schemes can make it more difficult to gain marks. I aim to create Astronomy resources here throughout this academic year.

The only way I actually managed to practice the questions was by doing the past papers. First, the specimen assessments were more of a “trial” – and I didn’t do too well on them. I did the rest of the past papers untimed. One of the most important parts is studying the mark schemes. Yes, they are very specific and sometimes you think that you have a seemingly correct answer but it isn’t on there (there’s no additional guidance section). That’s why you need to try and find patterns, similarities and key words in the papers.

This leads me onto 6 markers: the bane of my existence the more difficult questions in the exams. I particularly struggled with the Evaluation ones because the mark schemes for these are so weird. It is indicative content so your answer may be outside the mark scheme and still correct. But how am I meant to know if it is correct or not? What if the examiner marking my question decides to just ignore everything that isn’t on the mark scheme?

I’m going to be honest. I don’t have any advice on how to battle with the mark schemes.

What I can say is that there are three types of 6 markers that can come up. The least frequent one are content 6 markers. This tests you on information from the spec, although they will have some aspects of a practical. For example, in the 2022 Paper 2, there was a 6 marker on the HR diagram. Although you had to do an evaluation, it tested your knowledge from topic 13. The other two are Evaluation (most common) and Designing an Experiment. Here are the general structures that I created and used for each one.

Evaluation:
V – identify independent and dependent variables, comment if needed
O – what object is at the focus of this
M – Measurements (intervals, number, variation, trends)
M – method suitability and conversions
W – weather effects
C – conclusion of the evaulation

Designing an Experiment:
O – how to identify the object
T – time and duration
L – location
E – eye methods (e.g. averted vision)
M – method (including equipment, recording, repeats)
D – difficulties
I – improvements that can be made

If you compare mark schemes, you can find similar marking points across 6 markers such as “human assessment of shadow is incorrect” or “shadow cast on grass”.

Exam Technique

Before I say anything else, do not work backwards during the GCSE unless you really want to. The questions at the back, in my opinion, get exponentially harder every year. I started from question 10 to question 1 during my actual Paper 1 and ended up with less than 10 minutes to finish off 5 incomplete questions. Start from question 1 to bag those easier marks and warm up your brain for the questions ahead.

By the time you get to your actual GCSE exams, you should’ve done most or all of the past papers. Make “mistake banks” for Paper 1 and 2 separately. This involved collecting all your past paper mistakes and writing the correct answers to them onto a page. In this way, you can see repeated mistakes and gaps in your knowledge. This is great last minute revision resources, especially as sometimes questions are repeated from previous papers.

If you take too long/ don’t know how to do a question, don’t panic, move on and come back to it at the end. You’ll waste your time blankly staring at something that you cannot solve. I find that when I come back to something after 10 minutes, I have a “fresher” perspective and a better idea of what the answer may be.

If you are good with timing (typically have 15-20 minutes at the end of an Astronomy paper), leave the 6 markers out to complete last. This allows you to have more time and write the answers to them in greater detail, which is key to achieving that A or A*.

BEWARE OF EVERYTHING. Astronomy is probably the weirdest GCSE that I’ve had to do. If you only sort of know an answer to a question, just dump all your topic knowledge onto the relevant page. You never know what the mark scheme beholds. There will be trick questions. There will be awkward/weird unit changes. There may be a question that you did all the workings out for thinking that it concerned the Northern Hemisphere and then you realise… it was on the Southern Hemisphere.

I cannot express this enough. READ THE QUESTIONS.

And finally…

Congratulations to whoever survived GCSE Astronomy and good luck to whoever is taking it in the following years! I hope that you’ll never have to encounter any wildly unusual 6 markers…