Whether you’re about to begin your sixth form journey or returning for a second year, here’s how to prep for sixth form. And no, it doesn’t suggest leaving everything to the night before.
Updated: 22 Sept 2025So, you've just finished your GCSEs and you now have a blissfully long summer holiday stretching ahead of you.
Although you're probably tempted to do absolutely nothing other than lie around and go to the occasional BBQ – and to be fair, you've earned it – it may be worth dedicating just a small amount of time to doing some sixth form preparation.
Whether you’ve got a ‘wear what you want in sixth form’ or a ‘sorry you’ve still got an official uniform’ school, make sure whatever you’re planning on wearing for the first couple of days is clean and ready to wear.
That way you won’t be running around on the first day wondering where your shoes are, figuring out what tops go with what trousers or trying to get an ink stain out of a shirt that you didn’t realise hadn’t come out in the wash.
Chances are that at the end of the last school year your pencil case had seen better days. Not all the pens worked, pencils needed sharpening and pretty much every rubber was either broken, doodled on or so small you couldn’t find it without tipping out your whole contents of your bag.
So make sure you’ve got all the stationary you need, and if you don’t, there’s probably a stationary sale in your nearest shop. In fact they’ve probably had a back to school sale on since July.
If Spiderman has taught us anything it’s that with great power comes great responsibility (and that literally every male actor will play him at some point). So now you’re in sixth form you’ll have more work to do, lots of deadlines to juggle and exam dates to remember, so it’s worth getting organised from day one and buying a diary to keep track of everything.
Although we do recommend getting one of those school diaries, otherwise you’ll be spending money on something you’ll only get to use for three months before having to replace it again with something you only need for 8 months. Which would be very annoying.
Feeling nervous, anxious or even just plain annoyed about going to school next week? Whatever you’re feeling, it’s good to have your friends by your side to talk about it, laugh about it and go on the same journey with. So stay connected over the next week or so and chat about where you’ll meet, what classes you’ve got and generally what’s been going over the summer.
It’ll make starting back at sixth form more fun as you’ll realise the people you’ve missed over the summer holidays and feel more confident that actually sixth form is going to be quite fun!
After having so many weeks off, waking up before 9am and focusing in lessons all day may be a shock to the system. You’ve been able to do what you want for over a month now, and now you’re being told what to do, and the hardest your brain has worked is keeping up with the latest goings-on in your favourite TV shows, and now you’ll have to follow harder lessons than you’re used to in the first place.
So give yourself something to look forward to and make end of week plans as a way to congratulate yourself for getting through the week.
Yes, ok this is a really cheesy thing to say, but it’s true. A new school year brings with it a fresh start, so make sure you start thinking positively about the week ahead to get you in the right mindset.
You haven’t gone back to school just yet, so enjoy the rest of your summer and try not to stress about sixth form. You’ll have loads of help and support along the way when you start, but right now just relax and enjoy the rest of your holiday; it’s what the summer is for after all. Well that, and thinking of things to do whenever it rains, which tends to be most of the summer.