Online Revision and GCSE grades

[John Simkin]

The Fischer Family Trust has just carried out some research to see if online revision results in higher GCSE grades. Researchers analysed data on more than 80,000 pupils, of which 31,000 had been using the revision programme SAM Learning, which teaches pupils to mark their work using the same techniques as examiners and reveals how they can score points even when they do not know a full answer. The research concludes that this revision scheme can raise the proportion of pupils who gain five good GCSE grades by at least 5 per cent.

The report is not due to be published until next month. However, you will eventually find it here:

http://www.fischertrust.org/

[Guest]

The Fischer Family Trust has just carried out some research to see if online revision results in higher GCSE grades. Researchers analysed data on more than 80,000 pupils, of which 31,000 had been using the revision programme SAM Learning, which teaches pupils to mark their work using the same techniques as examiners and reveals how they can score points even when they do not know a full answer. The research concludes that this revision scheme can raise the proportion of pupils who gain five good GCSE grades by at least 5 per cent.

The report is not due to be published until next month. However, you will eventually find it here:

http://www.fischertrust.org/

This doesn't surprise me in the least. SamLearning has many good qualities despite their rather dodgy history author

However it suffers from what many of these commercial enterprises suffer from - a lack of real quality control across all the subjects, (when we floated the idea of subscription here we got very mixed reports from the various subject leaders), the failure to update content regularly enough, and their expensive subscription fees which tie schools in year on year. Teachers themselves can perhaps do far better both in terms of content and results by putting their own revision materials online.