A 60-day study plan for Class 10 and 12 board exams
Sixty days is enough time to make a real difference, if the time is planned. This plan works for CBSE and ICSE students in Class 10 or 12, and parents can use it to see what each stage should look like.
Tutelage team · · 3 min read
Two ideas behind the plan
Learning research consistently finds two habits that help: retrieval practice, which means testing yourself instead of rereading, and spaced practice, which means returning to a topic over several weeks instead of all at once. The plan builds both in.
Days 1 to 14: find and close the gaps
Start with an honest audit. For each subject, list every chapter and mark it green (confident), amber (shaky) or red (not ready), using a short set of questions rather than a guess.
- Spend most of this fortnight on the red chapters, starting with the ones that carry the most marks.
- Work from the textbook first: NCERT for CBSE, the school's textbook for ICSE.
- Keep an error log for each subject from day one.
Days 15 to 35: practise by chapter
Move through every chapter with previous-year board questions and the board's sample or specimen papers. CBSE publishes sample papers and marking schemes on cbseacademic.nic.in, and CISCE publishes specimen papers for ICSE and ISC.
Mix subjects within each day rather than spending a whole day on one. It feels harder, but switching makes your child recall each subject again, which is the point.
- Weekdays after school: two subjects, one chapter each, in focused blocks of about 45 minutes with a short break between them.
- Saturday: a mixed test of questions from the week's chapters, marked the same day.
- Sunday: go through the error logs, redo the questions in them, then take the evening off.
Days 36 to 55: full papers
Now the work shifts to complete papers under exam conditions, at the same time of day as the real exam if possible. Review each paper the next day: every lost mark goes into the error log with the correct method.
- Two or three full papers a week per subject is plenty; reviewing them matters more than sitting more.
- Keep returning to amber chapters in short sessions between papers.
The last five days
Stop starting new material. Read the error logs, redo the questions in them, and go over formulas, definitions, diagrams and key equations. The night before an exam is for a light review and an early night.
Sleep, food and phones
Sleep is when the brain consolidates what was learned during the day, so cutting it to study more is a poor trade. Regular meals, short breaks and some daily exercise all help concentration. Phones are the biggest distraction for most students: keeping them in another room during study sessions works better than willpower.
How parents can help
- Help draw up the plan, then let your child own it.
- Ask what they practised, not how many hours they studied.
- Keep the house calm around exam days and keep comparisons with other children out of it.
If one subject is clearly not coming together, focused 1-to-1 help on the red chapters can be worth more than extra hours alone. See CBSE Class 10 maths, CBSE Class 10 science, CBSE Class 12 physics and ICSE Class 10 maths.