How Road to 9 works
The short version: you tell it what you know, it decides what to study next and brings each topic back just before you'd forget it.
- Rate every spec point from very weak to very strong.
- Revise each topic once, weakest first.
- Refresh it in short bursts at growing gaps, so it sticks until the exam.
Why you forget, and how to stop it
Memory fades fast after you learn something: much of it is gone within a day or two if you never come back to it. This is called the forgetting curve, first measured by the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in the 1880s. Each time you pull a topic back out of your memory, it fades more slowly afterwards. So a few short refreshers at growing gaps beat one long session of cramming.
How much you remember of a topic, over a month
An illustration of the idea, not a measurement of you.
1. Rate what you know
Each spec point gets one of five ratings. A topic's colour comes from its spec points, and one weak point keeps the whole topic at OK or below.
| Rating | What it means |
|---|---|
| Very weak | I don't really know it |
| Weak | I've seen it but couldn't explain it |
| OK | I know the basics |
| Strong | I know it well, with small gaps |
| Very strong | I could answer exam questions on it now |
Be honest: the weakest topics come first. "Not taught yet" keeps a topic out of the plan until you've covered it at school. Every two weeks Road to 9 asks whether any of them have been taught. Anything still parked after the Easter holiday is planned as very weak, so nothing is missed before the exams.
2. Revise each topic once
- Every topic gets one revise session: 45 minutes, or 20 minutes if you rated it strong or very strong.
- Afterwards you rate it again. If it's still weak or very weak, you revise it again the next day (30 minutes).
3. Refresh it before you forget
Refreshers are short, 5 to 10 minutes: try to recall the topic first, then check. How many you get depends on how well you know the topic after revising it.
| After revising, you rate it | Refreshers |
|---|---|
| OK | 10, 10, 5, 5 and 5 minutes, after 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 2 weeks and 1 month |
| Strong | 3 × 5 minutes, spread evenly until the subject's first exam |
| Very strong | 2 × 5 minutes, spread evenly until the exam |
| Weak or very weak | No refreshers yet: revise it again first |
At each refresher you rate the topic again. Strong or very strong moves it on to the next, longer gap. OK repeats the same step. Weak, or OK twice in a row, sends it back to be revised again.
4. How each day is planned
- You set how long you can study each day (Settings), including holidays, days off and mock weeks.
- Refreshers that are due come first, so nothing slips. Then revise sessions, balanced across your subjects and weakest first.
- Refreshers and revise sessions are mixed, which keeps your brain switching between topics.
- Nothing is fixed: the plan is worked out again after every rating, so the week ahead is a forecast.
5. Mocks and exams
- Refreshers that would fall after a mock or exam are pulled forward to just before it.
- In the four weeks before a subject's first exam, that subject gets priority.
- From 20 March, past papers join the plan.
6. Your two numbers
- Learning done: how much of the revising and refreshing is behind you, measured in time.
- Confidence: how strong your ratings are, from very weak to very strong.
Learning done climbs steadily as you work. Confidence moves with your honest ratings, so it can dip after a refresher shows a gap. That's the plan doing its job.
The science
Spreading study out over time (spacing) and testing yourself (retrieval practice) are the two study methods with the strongest evidence. A large review of learning techniques rated them the most useful of the ten it studied. Road to 9 is built on both.
- Five learning strategies that work (Digital Promise), summarising Dunlosky et al. (2013) and Cepeda et al. (2006)
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