How to build a revision timetable around foundation training

A timetable that assumes you have every evening free will fail by the second week. This guide builds one from the hours you really have, with a worked budget you can copy and change.

Why most timetables fail

They are built from the topic list down: ten topics, so ten evenings. Real weeks have shifts, tiredness and a portfolio to keep up with. A timetable that works is built from the other end, from the hours you can actually protect, and then divided among topics.

Everything on this page is a study-method suggestion from us. None of it is a fact from a source, and none of it is a promise about results. Adjust it to how you learn.

Step 1: find the date and count the weeks

Take your sitting date from the regulator's own pages and count the whole weeks from today. The numbers below are invented: a sitting 24 weeks away.

Step 2: count the hours you can really protect

Look at the last four weeks. On how many days did you do any study? Be honest, then choose a weekly figure you would hit even in a bad week. Say 7 hours.

Step 3: take calculations off the top

Calculation skill comes from frequent short practice, so give it its own slot and do not trade it against topic time. Three sessions of 30 minutes a week is 1.5 hours a week.

Step 4: weight the topics

List your topics and mark the ones you rate weakest. Give those double the time. Suppose you have 12 topics and 3 are weak. The weak ones count as 2 shares each and the others as 1, so there are 3 × 2 + 9 × 1 = 15 shares.

Rate yourself again every month. A topic that was weak in week 1 may not be by week 12, and the hours should move with it.

Step 5: build in review

Learning a topic once is not the end of it. A simple spaced pattern: review it a day later, then after 3 days, after a week and after three weeks. On a topic first covered on 2 November that gives 3, 5 and 9 November, and 23 November. Ten minutes of questions on the old topic is enough for each review. This is our suggestion, not a rule.

Step 6: protect it

• Fixed slots. Put sessions in your calendar like a shift. "Whenever I get a gap" does not work.
• A floor, not a target. Decide the smallest session that still counts, such as 20 minutes of questions, so a bad day does not break the habit.
• A weekly check. Five minutes on Sunday: did I do the sessions, what moves to the buffer, what is next?
• Mixed practice. After you have covered a topic once, put its questions in with others rather than doing a block of one subject.
• Rest days. Plan them. A timetable without them gets broken for you.

The last two weeks

Use the reserved time for timed practice in the same conditions as your sitting: the same length, the same breaks, the same calculator. Spend the time after each session going through what you got wrong, because the review is where the improvement comes from. Keep the final days light.

Weak on a particular type of question? The extended matching questions guide has a method, and the how to revise guide covers what the regulator publishes about the assessment itself.

Sources

• This guide gives study-method suggestions and arithmetic with invented numbers. It relies on no clinical or legal source, so there is nothing to cite.

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Not affiliated with the General Pharmaceutical Council. Revision only, not clinical or legal advice. This guide relies on no outside source, and its worked examples use invented numbers and dates. Check anything that matters against a current source. See our terms of use and privacy notice.