A printable exam day checklist of what to take
Pack the night before, into a clear pencil case: pens with spares, pencil, sharpener, rubber, ruler, and a calculator you have checked if the paper allows one. Phones and smart watches stay out of the exam room entirely, even switched off. Your centre’s own instructions always win over any list online, including this one.
Last updated 20 August 2026 · Written and checked by the GCSEwiz team
What is on the sheet
- A pack-it-tonight list, split into every paper and some papers
- The banned list, which is stricter than people expect
- A calm running order for the morning, with room for your centre’s own instructions
2 sheets · A4 portrait · black and white
Your printer dialog also offers Save as PDF if you want a copy on your phone.
Exam day checklist
Page 1 of 2Tick it the night before, so there is nothing left to work out in the morning. Rules are set by the boards and applied by your centre: if your school says something different, do what your school says.
In the clear pencil case, every paper
- Two or three black or blue pens that you have tested
- Pencil, sharpener and a rubber
- A 30 cm ruler
- Water in a clear bottle with the label taken off
- Your candidate number, if you have not learned it yet
For some papers only, so check yours
- Calculator, allowed model, batteries checked, memory cleared
- Protractor and a pair of compasses
- A clean copy of a set text where the board permits one
- Coloured pencils for a geography or biology diagram
- Anything your access arrangements entitle you to
Leaving in the bag or at home
- Phone, off and out of the exam room entirely
- Smart watch, fitness band, earbuds, any watch that is not a plain one
- Notes, revision cards, anything written on your hand
- A pencil case that is not see-through
- Bottles with labels still on them
Being in possession of a phone in the exam room can put your result at risk even if you never touch it. Leave it with your bag.
The morning itself
Page 2 of 2A running order, and room for whatever your own centre has told you.
In order
- Eat something, even if you do not feel like it
- Leave earlier than you need to
- Arrive, find your room, then stop revising
- Skip the corridor conference about what everyone else revised
- Read the front of the paper properly before you turn it over
Anything my school or centre has told me
Access arrangements, a different room, an earlier start, a piece of equipment your subject needs: write it here rather than trusting it to memory at half past seven.
Pack the night before, without exception
A morning search for a working pen is a small thing that arrives at exactly the wrong moment. Packing the evening before removes a decision from a part of the day when your judgement is worse than usual, and it lets you leave the house without the low-level worry that something has been forgotten.
Test the pens. A pen that stops halfway through the second essay is a genuinely bad half hour, and it happens every year.
The phone rule is stricter than most people realise
Having a phone or a smart watch on you in the exam room is treated as a breach whether or not it is switched on and whether or not you touch it. The consequences run up to losing the paper.
The safe habit is simple: the phone never comes past the bag drop. Do not put it in a pocket "just for now", which is how nearly every case starts.
The corridor is optional
Ten minutes before a paper, the group by the door is comparing revision and someone is confidently describing a topic that will not come up. It raises everybody's anxiety and it changes nothing you can act on.
Find your room, stand somewhere quiet, breathe. If you want something to do with your hands, look at one page of notes you already know, which is reassurance rather than revision.