BGCSE Double Science 0569: how to pass all three papers (a course for students, teachers and tutors)

BGCSE Science Double Award (0569) asks a lot of a Form 4 or Form 5 student. Three sciences, three papers, and a practical paper that expects you to read a burette, plan an investigation and draw a graph the examiner’s way, even if your school lab is short of apparatus. Our BGCSE Science Double Award course is now open on Stadira, and it was built for exactly that challenge: every syllabus objective taught step by step, virtual labs you can run yourself, and five full mock exams to sit before November.

This guide explains what the 0569 exam asks of you, what the course contains, and how students, teachers and tutors can each get the most from it.

What the 0569 exam asks of you

BGCSE Science Double Award is sat as three papers:

• Paper 1: multiple choice. 60 questions in 1 hour 30 minutes, across Physics, Chemistry and Biology. A calculator is allowed. Every question is one mark, so speed and accuracy on the basics matter.
• Paper 3: structured questions. Short and longer written answers on all three sciences. Marks are given for specific points, correct units and clear working.
• Paper 4: Alternative to Practical. You never touch apparatus in this paper, but you are tested on what you would do and see in a lab: reading scales, recording results in tables, plotting graphs, spotting anomalies and improving an experiment.

Paper 4 is where many students lose marks they could easily keep. It rewards habits, not memory: headings with units in every table, readings to the right precision, a sensible scale on every graph. Those habits are learned by doing, which is why the course puts so much weight on hands-on labs.

What is inside the course

• 132 lessons covering every objective in the 0569 syllabus: Physics, Chemistry and Biology for Form 4 and Form 5, plus 14 skills lessons for Paper 4.
• More than 100 interactive labs and trainers. Take the readings, fill in the results table, plot the graph and find the gradient. A graph trainer checks your scale and your plotted points; a scale reader teaches you to read thermometers, burettes, ammeters and measuring cylinders correctly.
• Worked examples with every step shown: the formula, the substitution, the units and the answer, so you can see exactly where marks come from.
• Quick checks in every lesson, 19 topic tests and the Daily 10, a ten-minute mixed revision set that keeps earlier topics from fading.
• The Exam Room: five full mock sets. Papers 1, 3 and 4 in each set, to sit online or print and sit on paper, each with a marking key and model answers.
• A mastery map and a personal study plan. Enter your exam date and the hours you can study each week. The course works out how many lessons you need each week, keeps the last four weeks for mocks and revision, and tells you whether you are on track.
• A tap-a-word glossary in English and Setswana, read-aloud on every lesson card, and larger text when you need it.
• Science that earns. Every section ends with a small business idea built on the science you have just learned: race timing for school sports, seedling nurseries, solar drying of fruit, soap making and more. Science is not only for the exam hall.

If you are studying on your own

You do not need a teacher to use this course. Here is a routine that works:

1. Start with S01 Start here. Take the start-here check. It shows which sections you already know and which need the most work.
2. Make your plan. Set your exam date and your hours a week. Your weekly lessons appear on the mastery map, weakest sections first.
3. Study a lesson, then do its lab. Read the lesson, try the worked example yourself before you look, and run the lab. Answer the quick check at the end.
4. Do the Daily 10 every day. Ten minutes. It brings back topics from earlier weeks so you do not forget them.
5. Take the topic test when you finish a section, and go back to any lesson it points you to.
6. Sit the mocks in the last weeks. Sit them timed, ideally on paper, and mark them strictly with the marking key. A mark you give yourself kindly is a mark you lose in November.

You can print a one-page progress report at any time, or send a short summary to a parent on WhatsApp.

For teachers in government and private schools

Many Double Award classes are large, lab time is short, and marking three papers for every student takes hours. The course gives teachers practical help:

• Your own class code. Sign up as a teacher, make a class for each group, and give the students the code. They join from the Start here lesson.
• A teacher dashboard. For each student: lessons done, mastery by section, Daily 10, topic tests and mock scores. For the class: the five weakest sections and the students falling behind.
• Set work with due dates. Set a section or a full mock; it appears in each student’s plan as “Set by your teacher”.
• Marks for mocks sat on paper. Print a mock, sit it in class, and type each student’s mark into the dashboard. Paper marks sit beside online scores.
• Teach with it. Open any lab full screen with large controls on a projector, so the whole class can follow an experiment even when the school has no apparatus for it.
• One view for the department. A head of department sets up the school once; every science teacher joins it, and the head sees all classes and a school summary.

For tutoring centres

A centre owner sets up the centre and gives its code to the tutors. Each tutor makes a class for each group, so a student can be in a weekday class and a Saturday group at the same time. Tutors set work, track progress and mock marks, download a class sheet, and print a one-page report for each student to show parents what is improving. The owner sees every group and the centre’s averages.

Five Paper 4 habits that earn marks

1. Every table heading has a unit, written as quantity / unit, for example time / s or temperature / °C. Units go in the heading, not after each number.
2. Record readings to the precision of the instrument. A burette is read to 0.1 cm³; keep the same number of decimal places down a whole column.
3. Choose a graph scale that uses more than half the grid, with even steps you can read easily. Plot with small, neat crosses.
4. Draw one smooth line or best-fit straight line, not dot-to-dot. An anomalous point is identified in words and left out of the line.
5. Name the variables precisely. Say what you change, what you measure and at least two things you keep the same, with how you keep them the same.

Each of these has its own skills lesson and trainer in the course.

How to join

School courses are free until 28 February 2027. Create your account, open the course, and enter the code STADIRA100 at checkout. After that, the course is P699 a year, or P1,999 a year with Marked & Mentored, where your written work and mocks are marked by our teaching team.

Teachers: enrol in the course, then open the teacher dashboard to make your first class and get its code. Schools and centres that want to enrol a whole group can contact us for a quote.

Stadira’s mock papers are practice materials written by our teaching team. They are not past papers and are not endorsed by the Botswana Examinations Council.