Building a current-affairs bank for GP

Strong GP answers run on specific, current examples — and you can't conjure them in the exam. The fix is a current-affairs bank: a running, organised note of real examples across the main themes, built a little at a time over the two years.

Read widely, but purposefully

Follow a couple of reliable sources — a quality newspaper, a current-affairs magazine or podcast — across a range of topics, not just the ones you like. The aim isn't to read everything, but to keep meeting real developments you can later cite: a policy, a technology, a social trend, an international event.

Organise by theme

Keep your bank sorted by the main GP themes — science and technology, politics and society, the economy, the media and the arts, the environment. For each example, note what happened, and crucially the “so what”: which essay questions it could support, and what it shows. An example you can't connect to an argument isn't yet useful.

Turn news into evidence

A headline isn't an argument. For each example, capture enough detail to use it precisely — what, where, roughly when, and the point it illustrates. The same example can often serve several themes (a technology story can speak to ethics, the economy and society), so note its angles.

Build the habit

Fifteen minutes a week beats a panic before the exam. Add a few examples, review old ones, and occasionally test yourself: given a past essay question, which examples would you use? By the time you sit GP, you'll have a stocked, familiar bank to draw on under pressure.