Revision Spacing Plan
Work out the passes per topic first. If it is under two, fix that before planning anything else.
BFCBrilliance · bfcbrilliance.com/tools/study-session-spacing-planner
The exam
- Subject
- Exam date
- Days available
- Topics
- Sessions a week
- SESSIONS AVAILABLE
- PASSES PER TOPIC
- Days between passes
One row per topic — mark each pass
| Topic | Confidence 1-5 | Pass 1 | Pass 2 | Pass 3 | Pass 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The arithmetic, and what is actually supported
- Sessions available
- days × sessions per week ÷ 7
- Passes per topic
- sessions ÷ topics
- Gap between passes
- days ÷ passes per topic
- 28 days, 5/week, 6 topics
- 20 sessions, 3.3 passes each
- ⚠ Under 2 passes
- cramming, not spacing
- Well supported
- separated beats massed
- ⚠ NOT settled
- the optimal interval
- ⚠ A lost week
- costs a pass on EVERY topic
Before you commit to the plan
- Sessions a week set to what you will do, not intend to
- Passes per topic checked — is it at least two?
- Topics listed, not estimated as a number
- Confidence rated per topic before allocating
- Extra passes moved to the weakest topics
- A lost week planned for rather than hoped against
- Past-paper practice counted as its own topic
- The final few days left for review, not new material
Separated beats massed — the interval is the argument
That several spread sessions beat one long one is well supported and the effect is large. The precise optimal gap is not settled, and popular articles quote intervals with far more confidence than the research carries. Get the sessions separated; do not agonise over the exact number of days.
A lost week is not one lost pass
It removes a pass from every topic at once and compresses what remains. That is why it is worth deciding early which topic you would drop, rather than discovering in the last week that everything got one hurried pass.