“Students improved 0.46 more of a GCSE grade than those who didn’t have sessions."

It shows them that revision works and it’s worth spending their time on. Having that feeling of success is crucial. 

Part of the battle with students – particularly the ones who have been underachieving for a long time – is showing them that by working and revising they will be more successful. Creating that culture of success around revision is essential.

I like the way you do the assessments at the beginning and then the follow up ones at the end. They can see that they’re getting better at it. 

They then achieve levels of success and they see for themselves that revision works. It gets students to have a weekly check in, and a chance to feel successful in doing that – that has a big impact. 

It made them realise that this one session a week isn’t their full revision, it’s just an aspect of it, which led them to revise more. 

I’ve done this in the past with another provider but I found it too complicated – I always spent the first 20 minutes sorting problems. With Third Space Learning it was easy. 

What worked really well was that it was a consistent time every week. They would go to a computer room and sit with me or someone else – and another good thing is that it didn’t always need to be me.

When they have their headphones on, they’re very conscientious. As soon as they’re on, that 45 minutes of revision is really productive. 

The free headsets were brilliant, we just plug them into the USB and they always work. Plus we got sent plenty which was great. 

The work they were completing was of a really good standard. The explanations were really clear and the visuals were really good. It’s purposeful and useful revision led by a tutor who knows what they’re talking about and who can engage with the student.

I analysed our data to look at the progress that the students made. After 15 weeks, the students improved 1.19 of a grade on average, 0.46 more than those who didn’t have the sessions. 

I remember really clearly one student in set 3 who hadn’t got a 4 the whole time. We did 3 mocks and he never got one. He turned up to every session and would regularly say thank you after… and then he got a 4 and it was brilliant!

We actually put some in who were on grade 5 to try and get them to a grade 6. Because there’s so many gaps in prior learning, even the students on the higher curriculum couldn’t do some of the things on the early parts of the paper. It was really good for gap filling. 

If I could I would put this on for every student each week. 

Even your most able students really benefit from going over that recall. The least able ones and the least likely to revise will be shown that revision works, has an impact and that we care about them. To get a regular one to one session like this is amazing.

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