How to Increase Points Going Into 6th Year

I think that one of the most important things you can do in 6th year is learn the exam, rather than the textbook. For each of your subjects you should be focusing on doing exam papers and comparing your answers with the marking schemes. This is the most efficient way to learn exactly what the examiner is looking for. Textbooks often contain a lot of superfluous information, and while they are useful for understanding a topic initially, once you have a grasp on it you should be focusing mostly on the notes you made yourself (or your teacher gave you) and the exam papers. In a book there may be many paragraphs about a topic and if you spew out all that information in an exam you may get the marks but if you check the marking scheme you usually only need a key sentence, or sometimes even just a word. So someone who wrote two lines containing the key word/phrase will get the same marks as someone who wrote two pages containing the key word/phrase. But the student who wrote the two lines is obviously in a better position as they have much more time to spend on other questions in the exam and going over their answers etc. And of course, if you're missing that key word/phrase from the marking scheme, it doesn't matter how many pages you wrote - you'll get little or no marks.

So basically, you need to focus on exam technique. When I did my Leaving Cert I spent a lot of time researching and learning off what the examiners wanted. The same questions come up again and again in every subject, which is why going over and over exam papers and marking schemes is so useful.