HUNDREDS of East Lancashire students will be returning to school after the two-week Easter holiday without a game plan of revision for their GCSEs.

Now a list of ten top tips for GCSE exam success has been formulated by David Jaffa, the founder of online self assessment company SAM Learning.

Tip One is to find lots of easy marks as examiners use a mark scheme for each question, which is a list of points they will award marks for.

Mr Jaffa said: "If your answers are on their mark-scheme, you'll get the marks. And if not, you won't. It's as simple as that."

Tip Two is remember to do all your working out. In maths there are marks for writing down your method even if you get the answer wrong.

For Science questions it is also useful to remember Tip Three -- there are often extra marks for writing down units. Under the scheme, the answer 3cm would score one more mark than 3.

Tip Four is in English comprehension. Back up each of your points with a quote. There is an extra mark for each quote. For English essays the advice is to go through answers at the end and make some corrections -- you'll get extra marks simply for doing this.

Tip Six is never leave a blank space -- Mr Jaffa reckons that if you're not sure about an answer, guess.

He said: "Examiners are surprisingly generous and usually award marks if your answer is not quite right but they can see you're on the right lines. But you won't get any marks if you leave a blank. Even if your answer is completely wrong you can't score less than that. So you've nothing to lose by guessing."

Tip Seven is practice. The best way to know how to score marks is exam practice. Pupils at state school could ask teachers to take them through some past exam papers -- especially if they have experience as an examiner.

Revision websites are also recommended. They are available at www.samlearning.com which contains loads of exam style questions and mark-schemes designed so you can mark your own answers. SAM stands for Self-Assessment Method because the user marks their own work.

Other helpful tips at Nine and Ten are not to panic, and prepare.

Mr Jaffa adds: "There's an old Chinese saying -- a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. So whilst your exams may be daunting, and the amount of work you need to do may seem immense, don't worry, don't panic and get started."