Five Ways to Support Your Child’s A-level Success

How to be an A* student – top 5 tips
When interviewing A* students, there were some common traits which led to academic success, especially when comparing their results to students who didn’t achieve as high. Here are the top tips to achieve academic success:

1. You must believe in your potential and work with purpose.
Belief in yourself is essential. It helps you maintain high expectations and allows you to examine your performance with greater precision, identifying areas for improvement and making the necessary changes. The focus should be to master the material so thoroughly that you are aiming for 100%, without becoming distracted by the grade itself. Consistent effort throughout the A-level programme is key; relying on last-minute revision will not be enough.

Having high levels of belief, will also lead to you being more demanding of yourself and of your school. This means having the confidence to set ambitious goals and actively working to close the gap between where you are now and where you want to be. It also means taking the initiative to meet with teachers and senior staff to share suggestions on how they can better support your progress and that of other students.

2. You must truly understand the content and know how to apply it in an exam setting.
It is not enough to memorise facts; you must reach a point where you can explain the material clearly to someone else. Ask yourself, “If I think I know this, could I teach it?” This mindset helps you identify gaps in your understanding and reinforces your knowledge. As you revise, consider how each topic might be assessed. Ask yourself, “What questions could come up on this?” If you struggle to answer confidently, go back and review the material more thoroughly.

Move from the mindset of a student to that of a teacher or examiner. Read ahead in the course, familiarise yourself with upcoming topics, and prepare for each class as if you were going to teach it. Understand how mark schemes work and what examiners are looking for. Deepen your engagement by focusing on underlying principles, not just isolated facts. Each new concept should prompt you to re-evaluate and strengthen your understanding of earlier material. This approach builds a connected and adaptable knowledge base, allowing you to apply your learning flexibly under exam conditions. To achieve top marks, you need to understand the material at its core, not simply recall it.

3. You must regularly complete past paper questions under timed conditions
A-levels are, in many ways, a game, and success depends on learning how to play it. Simply highlighting a textbook won’t suffice. Instead, use active techniques like flashcards, teaching the material to someone else, or tackling past paper questions (or equivalent, e.g. essay titles for humanities subjects). The more effort your brain makes to retrieve information, the better it will retain it.

Past paper questions are invaluable, but timing and approach matter. Completing them too early (e.g.before you’ve properly understood the material) will offer limited benefit. Focus first on mastering the content, but always stay aware of how it may be assessed. Glance ahead at past paper questions so you understand the destination as you build your knowledge.

Once you’ve attempted a question, mark it carefully using the official mark scheme, then review the areas where your understanding was weak. Return to the material (see point 2) to reinforce and refine it. If you run out of past papers, ask your teacher or use online resources or AI tools to generate similar questions and have them reviewed for quality.

The key is to practise regularly under realistic conditions, reflect critically on each performance, and make the necessary adjustments every time.

4. Choose the Right Subjects
While this might seem self-explanatory, it is often underestimated. Your subject choices matter for several reasons, most notably in relation to your intended degree and ensuring that your A-level combination is competitive for university applications. That said, it’s just as important to choose subjects in which you feel confident and capable of excelling. This is often easier when you genuinely enjoy the subject.

One of the key benefits of A-levels is the opportunity to specialise in subjects that interest you. If you find yourself selecting subjects purely to satisfy the requirements of a particular university course, but lack passion for them, it might be worth reflecting on whether that course is truly the right fit.

Your third subject choice, in particular, requires careful thought. The first two subjects should almost always be directly relevant to your intended degree. Ideally, the third one should be as well, but there are exceptions. For example, if you are a highly talented musician and confident of achieving an A*, then taking A-level Music alongside Biology and Chemistry might be more strategic than choosing Mathematics if your chances of getting a top grade in Maths are low. While Maths is generally a stronger default option, in this case, Music could enhance your overall performance and academic profile.

At Ashbourne, students are welcome to begin their studies with four A-level subjects in any combination. This offers a valuable opportunity to explore different options before deciding which three to focus on long term. A common question is whether it is necessary or advantageous to continue with four subjects. If you find that managing four is not overly demanding, then by all means, continue. Universities will certainly recognise the additional effort involved in taking four A-levels.

However, our advice remains that 99% of university offers are based on just three subjects. If you find the workload challenging, there is no real benefit to continuing with four. That said, if you have particular strengths, such as a high level of mathematical ability that makes taking Maths and Further Maths manageable, or fluency in multiple languages which allows you to take on an additional subject, then taking four may still be a good choice.

You should also ask yourself: “If I took just three subjects, could I use my time more effectively to deepen my understanding, improve my grades, or pursue wider interests that enhance my university application?”

5. Take time to figure things out independently, but ask for help when needed.
If you don’t understand something, your first step should always be to try to work it out yourself. This process of independent thinking is often where the most meaningful learning takes place. Spend time reviewing your class notes, revisiting online resources, working through simpler textbook examples, and gradually building up to more complex problems. Use AI tools to support your understanding; importantly, not to give you the answer, but rather to guide your thinking and help you learn how to solve the problem yourself; the same should be the case if you work with an outside tutor.

This approach also means you should be asking lots of questions, especially to your teachers both inside and outside of class. Sometimes this will involve admitting that you don’t fully understand something. But, as noted in point 1, if you truly believe in yourself, then asking questions should never make you feel like you’re not a good student. In fact, it shows confidence, commitment, and a genuine desire to improve. If, after a genuine effort, you are still unsure, reaching out for help is not only acceptable, it’s essential.

Final Word
Academic success is rarely the result of a single trait or technique. It comes from a combination of belief, preparation, strategic thinking, and the willingness to learn both independently and collaboratively. If you can consistently commit to these principles you’ll put yourself in the strongest possible position to excel, not just at A-levels, but well beyond them.