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Recently, during the initial consultation, one of my new year-12 physics student told me that he had scored 48% on his first topic test. He’d understood every lesson in school. He’d done every piece of homework. He was genuinely surprised.

His parents were more surprised, because he’d left GCSE with a grade 8.

Nothing had gone wrong. This is what the first month of A-level looks like, and almost nobody warns parents it’s coming.

Why it shows up in October

At GCSE, the question tells you what to do. Calculate the resultant force. At A-level, the question describes a situation and leaves the student to work out which physics applies. That’s a different skill, and it isn’t taught anywhere — it’s assumed.

So a student can follow every lesson, agree with every step, and still stare at a blank page when they sit down alone. Understanding and starting are not the same thing, and the gap between them opens in October.

There’s a second problem. The content right now is the easiest content of the entire course — kinematics, indices, forces. If it’s a struggle in September, it doesn’t hold in January when it’s calculus and circular motion.

Three things to look for this week

  • Homework that finishes too quickly. At GCSE, twenty minutes effort and 90% output was normal. The same twenty minutes at A-level produces 45%. If the time hasn’t gone up, the work hasn’t changed.
  • Marks in the fifties being treated as fine. At GCSE, 60% was a comfortable 6 or 7. In October of Year 12, 55% on the easiest topic of the course is information, not a pass.
  • Algebra failing inside physics. I see this constantly. The student knows the physics and loses the marks rearranging the equation, or on standard form, or on units. The physics teacher assumes maths covered it. The maths teacher assumes it’s a physics problem. Nobody owns it, so nobody fixes it.

One thing to try

Ask to see a question they got wrong. Don’t ask for the answer — ask them to tell you what the question was asking them to find.

If they can’t put it in their own words, it isn’t an effort problem, and more hours won’t touch it. They can’t yet turn a described situation into a piece of physics. That’s the skill the next two years are built on, and it’s cheap to fix in October and expensive to fix in February.