7 min read · updated 12 October 2026
Why this needs thinking about at all
The International A Level is not one exam at the end of two years. It is a set of units, each with its own paper, its own grade boundary and its own sitting — and they can be taken in January, in May/June, or in October/November.
Most students never make a decision about this; the school enters them for whatever the cohort is doing, and that is usually sensible. But understanding how the structure works changes how you revise, and occasionally it changes what you should ask for.
The uniform mark scale, and what it means for planning
Your raw mark on each unit is converted to a standardised score, and the final grade comes from the total of those scores across all your units. This is what makes it fair to add together units sat in different sessions against papers of different difficulty.
The practical consequence is worth understanding: a weak unit can be carried by strong ones, because it is the total that matters. A student sitting six units is not six exams away from disaster — they are accumulating a total, and one bad morning is recoverable in a way it simply is not in a linear qualification.
It also means that knowing where you stand is a matter of arithmetic rather than anxiety. If you know your scores on the units already sat, you know what the remaining ones need to produce.
Three sittings a year
January, May/June and October/November. Not every unit is available in every series, and your centre decides which they offer — so the first thing to establish is what is actually possible for you, not what is theoretically possible.
The usual pattern is AS units in the first year and the remainder in the second. Spreading units across sittings reduces how much you face at once; concentrating them means less disruption to teaching time. Both are defensible, and the right answer depends more on the student than the subject.
Resits: what they are actually for
Because units are assessed separately, a unit can be retaken without repeating the whole qualification, and the better result is the one that counts towards your total. That is a genuine safety net, and it is the reason the modular structure suits some students so well.
Used badly, though, it becomes a trap. A resit costs time that the units ahead of you also need, and a student who keeps returning to one unit can end up under-prepared for three others. The question to ask is not "could I do better on that unit" — you almost always could — but "is this the best place to spend the next month".
If the unit is worth a large share of your total and your score on it is well below your others, resit it. If the gap is small, your time will usually produce more marks somewhere else.
What this means for revision
Revise by unit, not by subject. "Doing Physics past papers" is far less useful than working through papers for the two units you are actually sitting this session. It sounds obvious written down, and it is the single most common way IAL students waste revision time.
Check the unit codes on everything you download. The digit before the slash is the unit number — WPH11 and WPH14 look nearly identical and are completely different exams. The subject pages here list every unit held for a subject, so you can go straight to the one you need.
Three questions worth asking your teacher
- Which units am I entered for this session, and which codes are they?
- Which units does the centre offer in January, and would sitting one early help or crowd my teaching time?
- If a unit goes badly, when is the next realistic opportunity to resit it — and what would I be giving up to do that?
The answers take five minutes to get and they shape the next six months of your revision. Very few students ask.
Find your papers
Every Edexcel International GCSE and International A Level past paper on this site is free, with its mark scheme beside it. No account needed.