About StudentPatent
Evidence-based guides to studying, exams and school life.
StudentPatent exists because the gap between what learning research knows and what students are told to do is enormous, and nobody was closing it in plain language.
Ask a classroom of teenagers how they revise and most will say the same three things: read the notes, highlight the important bits, make the notes prettier. Decades of cognitive psychology say all three are close to useless on their own. Yet they remain the default, passed down from older siblings and repeated in study guides, because nobody ever explained the alternative clearly.
What we publish
Practical, evidence-informed guides on how to study, how to prepare for exams, how to stay functional through a stressful term, and how parents and teachers can help without hovering. Every article has to answer one question before we run it: what does a reader do differently tomorrow because of this?
How we work
- We follow the evidence. Where a technique has been tested, we say what the studies found and where they disagree. Where it has not been tested, we say that too.
- We name the limits. A method that works for vocabulary may do nothing for essay writing. We tell you which is which.
- We write for the real timetable. Advice that assumes six free hours a day is useless. Most of our plans assume you are tired and short on time, because most students are.
- We review and update. Articles carry a publication date and are revisited when curricula, exam formats or the research move.
Who writes here
Dr Helena Ashworth
Editorial director
Former secondary school head of department and doctoral researcher in cognitive psychology. Spends her time separating study techniques that work from the ones that merely feel productive.
Tomas Lindqvist
Senior education writer
Twelve years teaching mathematics and eight years writing about how people actually learn it. Believes most revision failures are planning failures.
Amara Boateng
Student life reporter
Covers wellbeing, motivation, university applications and the parts of school nobody puts on a timetable.
Who reviews our work
Every guide is checked by an editor with classroom or research experience before publication. Where an article touches wellbeing, sleep or mental health, we keep the claims conservative and point readers towards qualified support rather than trying to substitute for it.
Funding
StudentPatent is funded by display advertising. Advertisers have no sight of or influence over editorial content, and we do not publish paid placements disguised as guides.
Corrections
If something on this site is wrong, we want to know. Write to us through the contact page and corrections are made at the top of the article, with a note explaining what changed.