A-Level Politics Study Group 2024-25

I am with Edexcel as my board
My favourite party of the subject right now is going through pressure parties
I struggle with the history and keeping up with general knowledge

what part of the history do you struggle with? I also do edexcel

It’s mostly just a lot of the background knowledge I feel like I don’t have enough political knowledge to actively get the grade I’m hoping for in this subject

I get what you mean. Honestly, it really varies per topic with regard to how much background you need for example when you’re doing political ideas if you have that then you need a lot of background knowledge but when you do Prime Minister and you go through what they’ve achieved you only really need to go back to Margaret Thatcher and then link in James Callaghan beforehand. I am happy to help with any background knowledge that you need. I found that the politics shed was quite good for knowledge because it comes up with everything you need for your exam board. Do you take edexcel?

If you guys are in year 13, do you have any advice for just starting politics?

I finished A-level politics this year and have just started my politics degree, here are my 2 cents ☺️:

Thank you sm! Also when it comes to performing in class, in my class we have a lot of debates and I’m assuming every politics class has it, but I don’t think I’m that good at debating. How can I improve my debating skills if you have any suggestions?

If you guys are in year 13, do you have any advice for just starting politics?

yes i do! thank you so much i have exams during november and i really want and need to get a high grade

I get what you mean with debates they are kind of annoying. Personally I found that we often did debates the linked to either questions from the exam or they linked to news. The way I got around there so that I would have information for a debate is I would either have a word document that I could access or I would have a notebook that had essay plans but I wouldn’t plan out my point. I would just write the for and against a list them from the strongest argument to the weakest argument and that way I found that when I was amazing, I was using points that I used in my essay plan. My recommendation is to think when you have a debate think what can this link to for example if you have a debate on whether the voting age should be lower to 16 then you can have reasons for reasons against. I often made points in my essay plans that I did on things like lowering the age to 16 or changing the voting system because when you find a controversial topic it’s often one that will be debated and when that’s the case I often found that if I wrote it in an essay plan I could understand it in more detail and then after you’ve done it and you’ve written it out you’ll then start to kind of remember it now and then and then when you’re in a debate and they ask you Whether you should have the alternative voting system or the single transferable way to system or our current voting system, you can already have the points from an essay plan that you made.

I get what you mean with debates they are kind of annoying. Personally I found that we often did debates the linked to either questions from the exam or they linked to news. The way I got around there so that I would have information for a debate is I would either have a word document that I could access or I would have a notebook that had essay plans but I wouldn’t plan out my point. I would just write the for and against a list them from the strongest argument to the weakest argument and that way I found that when I was amazing, I was using points that I used in my essay plan. My recommendation is to think when you have a debate think what can this link to for example if you have a debate on whether the voting age should be lower to 16 then you can have reasons for reasons against. I often made points in my essay plans that I did on things like lowering the age to 16 or changing the voting system because when you find a controversial topic it’s often one that will be debated and when that’s the case I often found that if I wrote it in an essay plan I could understand it in more detail and then after you’ve done it and you’ve written it out you’ll then start to kind of remember it now and then and then when you’re in a debate and they ask you Whether you should have the alternative voting system or the single transferable way to system or our current voting system, you can already have the points from an essay plan that you made.

Have you got anything you’re struggling with with regard to your exams as you know that any topics you’re unsure of? Any context you’re not sure on? How are you feeling about the exam?

i mean im not truly up to date on a lot of political news and the issue also lies in that i struggle with paragraph structure and having my poinys come across clearly and consisely