According to a report released last year, the number of privately educated pupils has risen to a record high across the UK. In fact, the data compiled by the Independent Schools Council (ISC) found that there are now over half a million (544,316) pupils attending its 1,388 ISC member schools.
While this is certainly positive news for the independent school sector, leadership teams must continually invest in tools that ensure they stand out against the competition.
Here’s three top tips on how to provide a great parent experience.
- Topic:
- Education
Not only will a good quality and effective curriculum plan provide school leaders with a robust structure and measurable strategy for delivering education, it should also be designed with the aim of inspiring pupils and ensuring that teachers feel professionally rewarded within their role.
Knowing how best to approach curriculum planning step by step, can be challenging for schools, with so many things to consider and an array of different stakeholders involved. Of course, teachers play a key role in developing and implementing the curriculum, as well as making any required changes, therefore they need to be involved in the conversation.
- Topic:
- Education
GCSEPod has been helping students improve their grades for 15 years. Since its launch in 2008 GCSEPod has grown to be the market leading online revision tool and has earned numerous awards and accolades from its user base.
As much as we like to attest to the success of our own software, these claims are backed up by data and the numbers speak volumes. Students with the top 25% of usage achieved an average increase of 17 attainment 8 scores versus their predicted score, which means GCSEPod can increase users exam results by two grades higher per subject.
The effectiveness of GCSEPod is down to its combination of content, assessment and the intelligence it provides to lift pupils to the next level. Every year our product team take a deep dive into this data to produce a knowledge and confidence gap report. This edition has assessed information from over 80,000 GCSE students over the 21/22 academic year and identified areas students need to focus more on to improve their grades.
In this blog we present some highlights from our findings and talk about the benefits of technology in education. You can also download the full knowledge and confidence gap report here.
- Topic:
- Education
You know the benefits; you’ve heard the arguments – now you are thinking about becoming a paperless school.
Every year, across the country, schools are wasting thousands of pounds on an unnecessary and often invisible cost – paper. A recent study conducted showed that schools in the UK spent nearly half a billion pounds on paper each year, which is the equivalent of 3m Chromebook devices.
Today there's simply no need to spend this amount of time and money on paper. It creates admin for the sake of admin, is wasteful and puts additional strain to the environment. But the benefits of becoming a paperless school goes way beyond spending less on ink: it’s also a chance to improve school security, communication and teaching methods.
Thanks to cloud-based school management software that reduces school administration, it's easier than ever to reduce your paper usage, even if you don't want to fully commit to going paperless. Whether you’re drowning in files or on the path to digital-only, there’s only one way forward — and it means cutting back.
- Topic:
- Education
In March 2021, Education Technology published research that found just 3% of schools will be returning to solely face-to-face parents’ evening following the pandemic. Furthermore, 36% said they would only continue with virtual parents’ evening, while 61% were moving towards a hybrid model.
- Topic:
- Education
Education finance professionals will need no reminding of the Education & Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) deadline of 31 December for audited financial statements to be submitted. The countdown to the end of the year means many MATs and academies are in the middle of their annual audits, with some of the more eager finance teams completing the documents already!
Producing such complex financial records ahead of a strict deadline can cause headaches for business support staff in MATs. But with the right systems in place, time spent on compiling key documents can be reduced, leading to a more positive experience for staff, as well as making reporting and submitting much quicker.
While these stresses are fresh in the mind, it might be time to start to consider how implementing new processes or systems could help to make the task of financial reporting and audits more efficient and easier to complete next time.
- Topic:
- Education
When the 2022 GCSE and A-level results were published, disparities between the regions across the UK emerged. Commentators have speculated on the widening attainment gap between the North and the South, suggesting causes such as the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on education and the current state of the teaching job market.
Schools across the country will have used the summer to realign their reality with their targets, whether through recruitment drives, reworking lesson plans or investing in online teaching resources to alleviate workload. That reality has been changing dramatically since 2020, with Covid-19 related closures, restrictions and changes causing huge disruptions to life at home and school.
Ahead of the new academic year, we gathered data to see how the pandemic’s effect on education continues to cause disruption by analysing which region’s schools in England are the most ready to reopen this September.
- Topic:
- Education
Parent engagement in schools maximises children’s potential at all levels of their education and builds cohesion. Research has shown how important parental engagement in schools is, yet all too often parents can become disconnected with what is happening. The engagement and resilience of families across the UK in response to the pandemic should be viewed as one of Covid’s more positive stories and it is really important that this momentum is not lost.
- Topic:
- Education
Education Demand is helping international schools in 40+countries, teach, assess, monitor, and progress their GCSE/IGCSE students. Proven to help students achieve on average 1 grade higher than non-users, the award-winning content and assessment for 28 GCSE/IGCSE subjects is renowned globally for engaging students, consolidating subject knowledge, and accelerating progress, while crucially reducing teacher workload.
- Topic:
- Education
Eve Hedley has twenty-two years teaching experience in the MFL classroom across all key stages and is passionate about languages, raising achievement and improving the quality of Teaching and Learning in our schools. Eve is a former Deputy Headteacher and was in charge of Quality of Education and Teaching and Learning. Throughout her career, Eve has been involved in some highly challenging, but ultimately very successful school to school support programmes which have given her a unique skill set and an insight into what is needed to affect change and transform struggling schools and departments. Eve is a skilled coach, mentor, AST and SLE and also runs a successful consultancy business offering training and support to schools and other organisations.
Here Eve talks us through changes to the new GCSE MFL qualification:
- Topic:
- Education
