Free · Pearson Edexcel International GCSE · 8 courses · 939 taught units

GCSE revision on Incandio

Incandio is a free GCSE revision platform for the complete Pearson Edexcel International GCSE course — Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, English Literature, English Language, History and Religious Studies. Its method is Learn → Prove → Teach → Defend → Master: a student learns an idea, proves it in marked questions, teaches it back to an AI pupil, then defends it in a debate against the real historical figure who discovered, wrote or shaped it — Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin and hundreds more — until it is mastered.

It is completely free: no subscriptions, no paywalls, and no account is needed to start. Every lesson, every set text, every practice question and every debate is open to any student with a browser.

Try it on one topic → Diffusion, Osmosis and Active Transport is the reference lesson — Biology, about twelve minutes to the point where you teach it back. Or go straight to your subject.

Who it is for

Students sitting the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE — the qualification examined on specification codes 4MA1, 4BI1, 4CH1, 4PH1, 4ET1, 4EA1, 4RS1 and 4HI1. Incandio is built to that one board and qualification, and every page names the specification and the statement numbers it teaches, so a lesson can be checked against your own copy of the specification.

Sitting a different GCSE? The International GCSE — also known as the Edexcel IGCSE; Pearson’s own name for the qualification is the International GCSE, and that is the name every Incandio page uses — is Pearson Edexcel's version of the qualification for schools outside the United Kingdom and for some independent schools within it. It is graded 9–1 like a GCSE and covers broadly the same ground in each subject, but it is examined on its own specifications and papers. If your exam board is different, the ideas here overlap heavily — diffusion is diffusion — but the statement numbers, papers and mark schemes are the International GCSE's, and Incandio says so on every page rather than pretending otherwise. More on which exams it covers.

How revision works here: Learn → Prove → Teach → Defend → Master

Most revision is passive — you read, you highlight, you recognise the answer when you see it, and in the exam you have to produce it. On Incandio a topic counts as mastered only once you have done five things with it, in this order:

1. Learn. Understand the idea in plain language first — no exam wording yet — then the exact Grade 9 notes: the definitions, processes and equations a full-mark answer needs.
2. Prove. Five questions, marked on your own device the moment you answer. A wrong answer is told apart from an incomplete one: you are shown what was missing, and you can try again.
3. Teach. Explain it, in your own words, to Ember — an AI pupil who does not have the idea yet, will not pretend to, and asks the question a real pupil would ask.
4. Defend. Argue it against the real person who discovered, wrote or shaped it — Dutrochet on osmosis, Shakespeare on Macbeth, Darwin on natural selection — in three rounds marked against descriptors you can read first.
5. Master. The specification point is yours: sealed, and counted towards a working-at estimate for the course. In Incandio's own word, you have Incandio’d it.

Learn it. Prove it. Teach it. Defend it. Master it. That is the whole method, and it is what the word Incandio means. How Incandio works, stage by stage →

Why it is different from a revision guide

• You produce the answer; you do not recognise it. The five marked questions, the teach and the debate all require you to say the idea yourself — and tell you which idea was missing when you cannot.
• The historical figures are the examiners you cannot bluff. Every topic has a real opponent — the person who discovered, wrote, challenged or shaped the idea. You defend natural selection against Darwin, not against a quiz.
• Every page is the specification's own statement list. Nothing is a "typical topic"; each lesson names the statements it covers, and the validators that build the site refuse a course that misses one.
• Exam-style questions, marked the way an examiner marks. Exam Ready holds authored questions for every course, with the tariffs and command words of the real papers, marked against grids derived from the specification.

The subjects

8 courses, 939 taught units. Every unit has a public page you can read without signing in.

• Mathematics (4MA1) — 70 units: every strand of Specification A — number, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, statistics and the calculus — each module explained, its misconceptions named, then worked and marked
  Number · Percentages · Ratio & Proportion · Algebra · Sequences · Coordinate Geometry · Graphs · Functions · Calculus · Geometry · Circles & Circle Theorems · Mensuration · Trigonometry · Vectors & Transformations · Statistics · Probability
• Biology (4BI1) — 96 units: every specification statement from cells to ecosystems: the idea in plain language, the Grade 9 notes, five marked questions, then Teach and Defend
  Topic 1 · The nature and variety of living organisms · Topic 2 · Structures and functions in living organisms · Topic 3 · Reproduction and inheritance · Topic 4 · Ecology and the environment · Topic 5 · Use of biological resources
• Chemistry (4CH1) — 80 units: particles, bonding, the mole, rates, equilibria and organic chemistry — with the key terms defined on one page
  Topic 1 · Principles of chemistry · Topic 2 · Inorganic chemistry · Topic 3 · Physical chemistry · Topic 4 · Organic chemistry
• Physics (4PH1) — 77 units: forces, electricity, waves, energy, magnetism and radioactivity — every equation with its units
  Topic 1 · Forces and motion · Topic 2 · Electricity · Topic 3 · Waves · Topic 4 · Energy resources and energy transfers · Topic 5 · Solids, liquids and gases · Topic 6 · Magnetism and electromagnetism · Topic 7 · Radioactivity and particles · Topic 8 · Astrophysics
• English Literature (4ET1) — 97 units: every set text and every anthology poem: Grade 9 Notes, a Complete Guide, character and theme studies, and a debate with the writer
• English Language A (4EA1) — 20 units: the anthology texts, transactional writing and creative writing, each marked against the real grids Incandio teaches the anthology texts, transactional writing and Component 2 imaginative writing in full — each marked against the real grids. The unseen-reading half of Component 1 is mapped here but not yet taught.
  The anthology texts · Transactional writing · Creative writing
• Religious Studies (4RS1) — 210 units: six religions, every unit, with the beliefs and the arguments an examiner rewards
  Buddhism · Christianity · Hinduism · Islam · Judaism · Sikhism
• History (4HI1) — 289 units: all 21 options — every key topic taught, then judged in a debate against the historical case
  The French Revolution, c1780–99 · Development of a nation: unification of Italy, 1848–70 · Germany: development of dictatorship, 1918–45 · Colonial rule and the nationalist challenge in India, 1919–47 · Dictatorship and conflict in the USSR, 1924–53 · A world divided: superpower relations, 1943–72 · A divided union: civil rights in the USA, 1945–74 · South Africa: from union to the end of apartheid, 1948–94 · The origins and course of the First World War, 1905–18 · Russia and the Soviet Union, 1905–24 · The USA, 1918–41 · The Vietnam Conflict, 1945–75 · East Germany, 1958–90 · America: from new nation to divided union, 1783–1877 · Changes in medicine, c1848–c1948 · Japan in transformation, 1853–1945 · China: conflict, crisis and change, 1900–89 · The changing role of international organisations: the league and the UN, 1919–c2011 · The changing nature of warfare and international conflict, 1919–2011 · The Middle East: conflict, crisis and change, 1917–2012 · Diversity, rights and equality in Britain, 1914–2010

The key terms of each science, defined on one page: Biology key terms · Chemistry key terms · Physics key terms. The required practicals, method by method: Biology practicals · Chemistry practicals · Physics practicals. The equations with their units: Chemistry equations · Physics equations.

English Literature set texts

Each text has Grade 9 Notes (characters, analysed quotations, themes, essay plans), a Complete Guide, and a study for every major character and theme — ending in a debate with the writer.

• An Inspector Calls — J. B. Priestley
• Macbeth — William Shakespeare
• Romeo and Juliet — William Shakespeare
• To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
• Of Mice and Men — John Steinbeck
• Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro
• Western Lane — Chetna Maroo
• The Poetry Anthology — all sixteen poems — Part 3 of the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE English Anthology
• If— — Rudyard Kipling
• Prayer Before Birth — Louis MacNeice
• Blessing — Imtiaz Dharker
• Search For My Tongue — Sujata Bhatt
• Half-past Two — U A Fanthorpe
• Piano — D H Lawrence
• Hide and Seek — Vernon Scannell
• Sonnet 116 — William Shakespeare
• La Belle Dame sans Merci. A Ballad — John Keats
• Poem at Thirty-Nine — Alice Walker
• War Photographer — Carol Ann Duffy
• The Tyger — William Blake
• My Last Duchess — Robert Browning
• Half-caste — John Agard
• Do not go gentle into that good night — Dylan Thomas
• Remember — Christina Rossetti
• A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens
• Frankenstein — Mary Shelley
• Animal Farm — George Orwell
• Pigeon English — Stephen Kelman
• My Name is Leon — Kit de Waal
• Anita and Me — Meera Syal
• Telling Tales — Graham Swift, D. H. Lawrence, Helen Dunmore, John McGahern, Kazuo Ishiguro, Claudette Williams and Penelope Lively
• Leave Taking — Winsome Pinnock
• Princess & The Hustler — Chinonyerem Odimba
• A Taste of Honey — Shelagh Delaney
• DNA — Dennis Kelly
• Lord of the Flies — William Golding
• Blood Brothers — Willy Russell
• The Merchant of Venice — William Shakespeare
• Julius Caesar — William Shakespeare
• Much Ado About Nothing — William Shakespeare
• The Sign of Four — Arthur Conan Doyle
• Jane Eyre — Charlotte Brontë
• Great Expectations — Charles Dickens
• Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen
• The Tempest — William Shakespeare
• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde — Robert Louis Stevenson
• Power and Conflict — all fifteen poems — The Power and Conflict cluster of the AQA poetry anthology
• Ozymandias — Percy Bysshe Shelley
• London — William Blake
• Extract from The Prelude — William Wordsworth
• The Charge of the Light Brigade — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Exposure — Wilfred Owen
• Storm on the Island — Seamus Heaney
• Bayonet Charge — Ted Hughes
• Remains — Simon Armitage
• Poppies — Jane Weir
• Tissue — Imtiaz Dharker
• The Emigrée — Carol Rumens
• Checking Out Me History — John Agard
• Kamikaze — Beatrice Garland
• Love and Relationships — all fifteen poems — The Love and Relationships cluster of the AQA poetry anthology
• When We Two Parted — Lord Byron
• Love's Philosophy — Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Porphyria's Lover — Robert Browning
• Sonnet 29 – 'I think of thee!' — Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Neutral Tones — Thomas Hardy
• Letters from Yorkshire — Maura Dooley
• The Farmer's Bride — Charlotte Mew
• Walking Away — Cecil Day-Lewis
• Eden Rock — Charles Causley
• Follower — Seamus Heaney
• Mother, any distance — Simon Armitage
• Before You Were Mine — Carol Ann Duffy
• Winter Swans — Owen Sheers
• Singh Song! — Daljit Nagra
• Climbing My Grandfather — Andrew Waterhouse
• Worlds and Lives — all fifteen poems — The Worlds and Lives cluster of the AQA poetry anthology
• Lines Written in Early Spring — William Wordsworth
• England in 1819 — Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Shall earth no more inspire thee — Emily Brontë
• In a London Drawingroom — George Eliot
• On an Afternoon Train from Purley to Victoria, 1955 — James Berry
• Name Journeys — Raman Mundair
• pot — shamshad khan
• A Wider View — Seni Seneviratne
• Homing — Liz Berry
• A Century Later — Imtiaz Dharker
• The Jewellery Maker — Louisa Adjoa Parker
• With Birds You're Never Lonely — Raymond Antrobus
• A Portable Paradise — Roger Robinson
• Like an Heiress — Grace Nichols
• Thirteen — Caleb Femi

Exam questions

Every authored exam question on Incandio, on one page — original exam-style questions across the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE courses Incandio teaches, grouped by topic, each with its command word, its tariff and the specification statement it assesses, and each marked on Incandio with the mistake you actually made named. Free, and no account is needed to read them.

Where to go next

• Search a topic — type it in your own words: "how does diffusion work", "macbeth quotes", "what is a mole".
• The specifications — papers, assessment objectives and every topic, course by course.
• Exam Ready — exam-style practice, marked on Incandio.
• The historical figures — the people you defend your ideas against, each with a written life.
• The Agora — the debates, mapped to the specifications.
• About Incandio — who makes it, how the content is produced, and how to report an error.