Take our quiz to find out what your revision personality is! >>

How to get a 9 in GCSE DT?

shreyv2000

I am in year 11 and I do AQA DT.
I need general tips on DT as it is my worst subject currently, I want a grade 9 but I am at like a 7 rn.
My NEA is due in a month but I dont know how to revise theory as there are almost no past papers online and my notes are bad
I got 75 on my january trial exam, which is a 7, I also got 76 in my end of year last year, so I'm worried that my performance is declining. The extremely high grade boundaries dont help. I cant afford to spend much time on my NEA powerpoint as I have to revise on my other exams but it used to be around a level 7 before I improved.

How do I increase my grades quickly as my NEA is way too long and theory is confusing to revise for.

Reply 1

arc.ne

hey, i got 9 at DT gcse - i basically just revised by making midnmaps of the content. idk if you've hear of it, but theres this website called seneca - i used to dislike it, but for gcse dt it actually had everything that was on the spec so it was quite good. maybe try using that. make sure youve searched aqa gcse dt. if youve got a good mark on your NEA, it massively reduces the pressure for your exam so its definitely worth maximising marks if you have the time. other than that its quite content heavy and relatively specific so just keep doing some regular recall rather than just reading notes (e.g rewriting in a different format etc)

Reply 2

jamsparkle

i got a 9 in DT - kind of flopped the NEA (genuinely one of the hardest things ive ever done) and ended up scraping a 9 with 91/100 on the written exam

grade boundaries are ridiculous because the nea boundaries are really high, so you should really focus on making sure that you get as high of a mark as possible, since its very possible to score low enough on the NEA that you are already unable to get a 9 even with full marks on the written exam

the written exam is difficult because it's essentially 2 papers worth of content put into one paper - i second seneca (normally i hate seneca but there's not really much out there and it's quite useful), and i remember using a big cgp book to help with revision. if you do geography then a lot of the long answer questions on environmental impact are quite similar and you can draw on that knowledge also

Reply 3

Greenhouse999

Original post by shreyv2000

I am in year 11 and I do AQA DT.
I need general tips on DT as it is my worst subject currently, I want a grade 9 but I am at like a 7 rn.
My NEA is due in a month but I dont know how to revise theory as there are almost no past papers online and my notes are bad
I got 75 on my january trial exam, which is a 7, I also got 76 in my end of year last year, so I'm worried that my performance is declining. The extremely high grade boundaries dont help. I cant afford to spend much time on my NEA powerpoint as I have to revise on my other exams but it used to be around a level 7 before I improved.
How do I increase my grades quickly as my NEA is way too long and theory is confusing to revise for.

I wouldn't worry about going down by one mark in the last year,
It is very likely that the more recent paper was slightly harder or you made slightly more mistakes.
For revision I like doing past papers,which I tend to find on revision world

Here is the link for the DT section
https://revisionworld.com/gcse-revision/design-technology/gcse-design-and-technology-past-papers-0/aqa-gcse-design-and-technology-past-papers

I third seneca as well!
Thank you,

(edited 2 weeks ago)