"Norman Stanley Fletcher...you are an habitual criminal, who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard, and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner..."

- Porridge, BBC TV

I've started telling my students that in exams, they must think like a hardened criminal!

I'm not suggesting you steal the mark scheme or bribe an examiner. What I mean by this is adopting a mindset based on a pragmatic idea: "what is the most likely path to the best available outcome?"

When career criminals are arrested and interrogated by the police, they go into damage limitation mode. Anyone who's watched documentaries like 24 Hours In Police Custody will know that far from the tense battle of wits depicted in detective dramas, police interviews mainly consist of surly men saying "No comment" and waiting to speak to their solicitor. They know they may go to prison and like Fletch in Porridge have already accepted this risk as part of their nefarious profession.

By contrast, inexperienced criminals often incriminate themselves. They talk too much, they try to convince the police of their innocence, they spin webs of lies that end up revealing their guilt.

How does this relate to you and your exams? In a nutshell, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

In an exam, you have one aim and one aim only: attain the maximum possible number of marks in the time available.

Now, the maximum number of marks realistically available to you will depend on your aptitude for the subject, how well you have prepared and on the questions and topics that happen to make up the exam paper on the day. None of this alters the task ahead of you: attain the maximum possible number of marks in the time available.

Here's where the criminal mindset comes in: if you fixate on perfection: a level 9, A* or equivalent, you are putting pressure on yourself. Like the panicking suspect in the interview room, you leave yourself only two options: somehow pulling off a flawless performance that gets you that top grade (or in our analogy, sees you exonerated by the law).

Better, I say to think like this: When you open the exam paper and begin, you have the same score as everyone else: zero! From that moment on you have only one job to do: attain the maximum possible number of marks in the time available.

This allows you to be completely ruthless in how you use your time and energy during the exam. Question 3 taking too long? Park it and come back to it later once you've hoovered up some easy marks. Not sure whether that solution is quite right? Well unless you've got something better, you might as well write it down and review it later if you have time. Perfection is lovely if it's an option but it very, very rarely is. Remember, you have one task: attain the maximum possible number of marks in the time available.

I'm sure you've read many exam strategies. It's worth trying these out during mocks and class tests to see what works for you. This is by no means a comprehensive list of exam strategies but these are always worth considering.

• Low hanging fruit: do the easy questions first.Lots of reasons for this.
  1. You are trying to attain the maximum possible number of marks in the time available. So get the easy marks in the bag before you spend more time on anything tougher.
  2. You will warm up your brain and feel calmer and more confident by tackling easy, familiar questions first. You wouldn't go to the gym and bench 200lbs cold.
  3. If you do run out of time, you want the questions that you didn't do to be questions you might well have got wrong anyway!

• I'd say (and this is more for papers with lots of short-medium questions rather than essay subjects with one or two extended pieces of writing) spend the first half hour seeking out and grabbing all the easiest marks. I.e. if during the first half hour of the exam anything makes you stop and think for more than a few seconds, leave it for now and move on.

• The converse also applies: leave the hardest questions until last. To reiterate: If you do run out of time, you want the questions that you didn't do to be questions you might well have got wrong anyway!
  • Maths papers generally start with the easiest questions and get progressively harder. Other subjects such as science have no link between order and difficulty. If question 1 is about one of your worst topics, don't start with question 1!

I will write more in another blog post in a few days. For now take on board these tips and if you want to stay out of jail, remember: attain the maximum possible number of marks in the time available.

 - Tom McKennan, maths and physics tutor.