IB Revision Timeline: Year 12 to the May Session

Nothing is assessed yet, which is precisely why this term decides so much. Two things matter.

Close the gap from IGCSE. Students arriving with shaky algebra or weak essay structure spend the whole Diploma compensating. This is the cheapest moment to fix it, and the only moment with no deadline pressure. See moving from IGCSE to the IB.

Start a retrieval habit. Notes made in September are useless by the following May unless someone returns to them. Turn each topic into questions as you go, and answer them from memory on a schedule. Doing this from the first term is the difference between revising in Year 13 and relearning in Year 13.

Internal exams in this window become the main evidence for predicted grades. Students treat them as practice. They are not.

Extended Essay work also begins here at most schools. Get the question settled and the reading started before the summer, because the summer between Year 12 and Year 13 is the only large uninterrupted block the Diploma offers, and it is the difference between a comfortable autumn and a bad one.

Two jobs, and they are not revision.

1. Extended Essay. A full draft, or as close as you can get. Every week of EE work done now is a week not stolen from subject revision later.
2. Consolidate Year 12 content. Not new material. Go back over the first year and find out what has already gone, because roughly half of it has.

Students who use this block well arrive in Year 13 with the EE largely handled. Students who do not spend the autumn writing it while the IAs are due.

This is the hardest period of the Diploma. Internal Assessments across several subjects, the Extended Essay final draft, the TOK essay, mock exams, and university applications with autumn deadlines, all inside about twelve weeks.

Nothing here can be dropped, so the only workable response is sequencing. Write down every deadline in the term on one page, in date order, and work backwards from each. Students who hold this in their heads discover collisions a week before they happen.

If something has to give, protect the coursework over the mocks. Coursework marks go on the certificate, and mocks do not.

With coursework finished, revision becomes the whole job.

• Full past papers under timed conditions, marked to the real mark scheme. This is the only reliable measure of readiness.
• Categorise every lost mark as content, technique or carelessness, and treat the three differently. Most students find far fewer of their errors are careless than they assumed.
• Rotate subjects. Blocking a whole week on one subject feels productive and forgets the other five.
• Stop learning new content in the final fortnight. Consolidate what is nearly secure instead. The marginal new topic is worth less than the topic you almost know.

One practical note for 2026 candidates: the IB has begun phasing in digital assessment from the May 2026 session, starting with a small number of language courses. If your subject is affected, practise in the format you will sit.