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Past papers: how to use them and turn one into a practice quiz

A past paper revision method: sit it timed, mark it against the mark scheme, sort the lost marks by topic and kind, then quiz yourself on the weak topics.

The EdProcto editorial teamWritten and checked against the research it cites. Last checked . How the guides are made

Guides · Testing yourself · · 13 min read

How do I use past papers effectively when I revise for an exam?

Use past papers as a cycle, not a score. Sit one with the book shut and the clock running, mark it point by point against the mark scheme, sort every lost mark by topic and by kind of mistake, restudy the weak topics and quiz yourself on them over the next days. Then sit a different paper.

Most students treat past papers as a score: sit one, add up the marks, sit another. Used like that, a paper only tests you. Used as a cycle it teaches too, because every lost mark names a job to finish before the exam.

The cycle: sit the paper, mark it against the mark scheme, sort what you lost, restudy the weak topics, quiz yourself on them, then sit a different paper. EdProcto's page for students covers the quiz half.

This guide shows how to use past papers effectively: the research behind each step, where the evidence is thin, and one two-hour paper followed through three weeks to an exam.

Why is a past paper the best practice for an exam?

A past paper is the closest practice to the exam that exists: the same kinds of question, the same length, the same marking. Two findings say why closeness matters.

The first is the testing effect. Yang et al. (2021) pooled 222 classroom studies covering 48,478 students and found that quizzing raised achievement to a medium extent (g = 0.499). The gain varied with how consistent the test format was, whether corrective feedback followed and how many times students were tested.

The second is transfer-appropriate processing, one of three accounts that review says its findings support: practice pays most when it asks for what the final test will ask for. Veltre et al. (2015) tested it with cued recall. Practice tests helped in every condition, and final recall rose as the practice cue and the final cue became more alike.

Practising on the test itself counts too. Kulik et al. (1984), pooling 40 studies, found that students raise their scores on aptitude and achievement tests by taking practice forms of them.

How do you mark a past paper so that it teaches?

Mark it yourself, one marking point at a time, and open the mark scheme only when you have finished. In our view it is the most useful document in the pack.

Marking is the feedback. Butler and Roediger (2008) had students read passages and take a multiple-choice test followed by feedback at once, after a delay, or not at all. Against no feedback, both kinds meant more correct answers on a delayed recall test, and fewer of the first test's wrong options turning up there as answers. A paper sat and never marked is the no-feedback condition. Marking it next morning is fine.

Mark by the point, not by the feel. Dunlosky et al. (2011) found college students often overconfident when judging their own recalled definitions, crediting answers that held errors. The overconfidence fell when they first judged whether the answer included each separate idea of the correct one. A mark scheme is that list of ideas, and AQA (n.d.-b) tells students to check their papers against it to see what examiners look for. Tick each point you wrote, not each one you meant.

Should you do past papers timed or untimed?

Do both: untimed and by topic while you are still learning the course, timed and whole once you have covered it. That is a working rule, and the evidence behind it is thinner than most revision advice admits.

There is evidence for practice that matches the test: Yang et al. (2021) and Veltre et al. (2015) both point that way. The clock is part of the match, but that step is our inference, since neither study varied the time allowed.

There is evidence that being tested in practice protects recall under pressure. In Smith et al. (2016), people put under stress a day after learning showed the usual drop in recall if they had restudied, and none if they had learned by practice tests. And AQA (n.d.-b) advises answering past papers as if under exam conditions, to develop exam writing skills.

There is no direct evidence. We found no controlled study comparing timed past papers with untimed ones on later exam marks, so anyone who puts a percentage on the clock is guessing.

What only a timed sitting gives is your pace. A two-hour paper of 100 marks allows 1.2 minutes a mark, so a six-mark question earns about seven minutes.

Should you do the same past paper twice?

Not whole, and not soon: a second sitting of the same paper measures your memory of that paper as well as your grasp of the course. In Kulik et al. (1984) the gain from practice was larger when the practice form and the real test were identical than when they were parallel forms. Two things answer that.

Variation

Meet the idea again in a new question. Butler et al. (2017) ran four experiments in which people watched clips of a geology lecture, then answered either one application question three times or three different ones. Two days later, on new application questions, the group with different questions did better in all four. A different year's paper gives that variation, and so does a quiz of new questions on the topic.

Spacing

Leave a gap. Cepeda et al. (2008) taught facts to more than 1,350 people, reviewed them after a gap, and tested them up to a year later. The best gap grew with the delay: about 20 to 40% of a one-week delay, which is 1.4 to 2.8 days, falling to 5 to 10% of a one-year delay. For an exam weeks away, come back after days, not hours.

So redo only the questions you missed, two or three weeks on, with new questions in between. See how re-tests are spaced.

How do you sort the marks you lost on a past paper?

Sort every lost mark twice: by topic, which says what to restudy, and by kind of mistake, which says how. The five kinds are a working sort of our own, not a taxonomy from the research; a neighbouring guide covers the closer reading of one wrong answer.

  • Did not know: nothing to write, or a guess. Restudy, then quiz yourself.
  • Could not apply: the idea was there, its use was not. Worked examples, then questions of that type from other papers.
  • Misread: a sound answer to a different question. Underline the command word and the marks.
  • Too thin: fewer points than the marks asked for. Write one point a mark.
  • No time: not reached, or rushed. Pace by minutes a mark.

A worked example: one two-hour paper

A student sits a two-hour chemistry paper of 100 marks on Monday 12 October, three weeks before the exam on Monday 2 November. The paper is invented for this example. Marked the next day, it comes to 68, and the 32 lost marks sort like this:

Topic Lost Did not know Could not apply Misread Too thin No time
Bonding and energetics 5 1 1 1 2 0
Quantitative chemistry 9 2 5 1 1 0
Rates and equilibrium 8 4 1 1 2 0
Organic chemistry 5 2 0 0 1 2
Practical work 5 1 0 0 0 4
Total 32 10 7 3 6 6

Two topics, quantitative chemistry and rates and equilibrium, took 17 of the 32 lost marks. By kind, 17 went on knowledge and method and the other 15 on technique: misreading, thin answers and the clock, which no rereading of the textbook would fix.

How do you turn a past paper into a quiz you can take again?

Make the quiz from what the paper found: your own notes on the weak topics, turned into new questions and brought back on later days. EdProcto is the best tool for this step because it gives what a reused paper cannot: fresh questions on the same ideas, and a date to return.

  1. Paste. On the home page, choose "Test yourself" and paste your notes on the weak topics, at least a paragraph. Paste only material you have the right to use: see the last section.
  2. Pick the shape and number. The page writes 3, 5, 8 or 10 questions in one shape. For a quiz you will retake, choose one marked by rule: multiple choice, fill in the blank or estimate.
  3. Check every question. Procto AI writes new questions. It is asked to write only from the text you paste and can still be wrong, so check each against the mark scheme or your notes, and edit or delete what does not hold.
  4. Take it as a study quiz. Each answer is checked as you give it, and the run ends with a retry of your misses.
  5. Come back when due. The quiz comes due two days after a run with misses and seven days after a clean one. Your dashboard shows it, and no reminder is sent.

The dashboard's builder also reads a PDF, a Word file or a text file, text only: a scanned page that is just an image must be typed or converted first (more on PDFs). The kit named "Any exam, from your own material" among the kits takes your notes or a syllabus section and asks Procto AI for new questions in the exam's style; paste a paper itself only where your board's terms allow. No kit holds real exam questions, and EdProcto is not affiliated with any exam board.

Written answers in a quiz of the exam kind wait for its owner, who marks them or presses "Ask Procto AI" on each, so keep long answers for the paper itself. To time a quiz, set "Time limit" and "Minutes overall" in its settings. The Free plan includes study quizzes, the kits and 20 questions a month written by Procto AI, and the Learner plan raises that to 100 (pricing).

Three weeks from one paper to the exam

The student pastes their own notes on the two weak topics and asks for ten questions, half the Free plan's 20 for the month.

Date What happens
Mon 12 Oct Paper A, 120 minutes, timed
Tue 13 Oct Mark, tally, read the examiners' report. Restudy. Quiz 1 on EdProcto: 6 of 10
Thu 15 Oct Quiz 1, two days after a run with misses: 9 of 10
Sat 17 Oct Again: 10 of 10
Mon 19 Oct Paper B, a different year. Quiz 2 from its weak topics
Sat 24 Oct Quiz 1, seven days after the clean run
Mon 26 Oct Paper C, the newest
Thu 29 Oct The questions missed on Paper A, 17 days on
Sat 31 Oct Quiz 1 once more
Mon 2 Nov The exam

How many past papers should you do, and when should you start?

Do as many as you can mark and sort properly, and start with single questions as soon as a topic has been taught. No study we read gives a number: Kulik et al. (1984) found only that gains grew with the number of practice tests. The rest is our working rule.

  • One paper sat, marked and sorted teaches more than three sat and scored.
  • Once the course is covered: a full timed paper about once a week, and quizzes on the weak topics between.
  • Keep the newest paper for the last fortnight.

What can past papers not tell you?

They cannot tell you what will be on your paper, and old ones may not match your course.

The syllabus may have changed. AQA (n.d.-b) shows only papers that relate to the current specification, and offers specimen papers where a new specification has none yet. Check a paper from anywhere else against your specification.

Question spotting backfires. Baird et al. (2016) surveyed 1,002 Irish Leaving Certificate students. Believing that narrowing the curriculum was a good way to prepare had a negative relationship with exam scores. That is a correlation in one country, not an experiment, but the logic is plain: a paper samples the course, and the sample changes.

The examiners' reports are the corrective. Goodenough (2017), a subject advisor writing on OCR's site, describes them as going through each question, noting what candidates did well and what they should improve. Read yours after marking: it shows whether your lost marks were everyone's.

Who owns a past paper, and what may you do with it?

The board that set the paper owns it, and you may use it for your own study as far as that board's terms allow. This is plain-words guidance, not legal advice.

AQA's terms, read on 10 October 2026, are one example. Its website terms allow material to be downloaded only for your own personal, non-commercial use or your school's, and require written permission for anything else (AQA, n.d.-c). Its copyright policy for schools adds that nobody may use AQA materials to train AI tools, and that putting any AQA material into an AI tool would breach copyright law and AQA's policy (AQA, n.d.-a). Other boards word their terms differently, so read your own.

  1. Take papers from the board's own site or from your teacher.
  2. Do not post, share or sell papers, mark schemes or copies you have typed up.
  3. Read your board's terms before pasting a paper into any tool, EdProcto included. Where they rule it out, as AQA's do for AI tools, paste your own notes on the topics instead.

Quick questions

How many past papers should I do before an exam?

No study we read gives a number. Do as many as you can mark and sort properly: for most students, about one full timed paper a week in the last month.

Should I do past papers timed?

Time full papers once the course is covered, and work untimed by topic before that. No controlled study we found compares the two.

Is it worth doing the same past paper again?

Only the questions you missed, and after two or three weeks. A repeat of the whole paper partly measures your memory of it.

Can I paste a past paper into EdProcto?

Only if your exam board's terms allow it, and AQA's policy rules out putting its material into AI tools. Your own notes on the weak topics can always be pasted: EdProcto's page for students shows what comes back.

References

EdProcto for students

Know what you know before the exam does.

School, college and university students preparing for their own exams.

See the page for students

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