Do This BEFORE February or March Mocks
School leaders tend to value a second set of mocks like this:
80% of the benefit - we will get more reliable predictions of GCSE grades
20% of the benefit - students will know the exam better and potentially get a better grade.
The value of the prediction is meaningless - you won’t be able to do anything about it if students are doing badly, and if they are doing well, they’re going to do well - the prediction is irrelevant. Call it a 5% benefit for potential peace of mind.
We want the second mock to lead to better grades. That should be 100% of the reason to set them.
So what would lead to higher grades?
Don’t set a complete past paper.
Construct the past paper based on your question and topic predictions. What percentage of your predictions would need to be right before students gained a huge advantage in the exam? 20%? That’s only 1 in 5 topics predicted correctly.
I’ve never averaged below 50% predicting English Literature questions. And I also teach students how to apply my prediction to a range of questions, should my prediction not come to pass.
If heads of department aren’t predicting questions, they are simply relying on luck. Why gamble with students’ grades? What is to be gained?
Once you’ve decided on the questions for the mocks, pick the students you will most make a difference to. They are the ones with great Attitude to Learning, but low progress. Or those who worked hard in year 7 and 8, but have tailed off and now feel lost. Or those who have simply matured late - want to do well, are willing to work hard, but are overwhelmed with where to start.
Revision Programme After School for 20-30 Targeted Students
The Pitch
The most efficient way to revise is by doing past papers.
They help you understand what knowledge you need to revise.
You learn how to answer exam questions, so you get better at the exam.
Each time you do a past paper, you find out what you know well, so you can stop revising it, and just focus on what you need to get better at.
Write down 3 things which will motivate you to attend when you might not want to.
The Sequence
Before the session, students pick the 5 subjects in which they most want to improve grades.
In the session, they spend 40 minutes doing part of an exam paper.
They spend 10 minutes marking it.
Break for 10 minutes to have refreshments (biscuits and drinks?)
Celebrate success - who has got a mark they are proud of? Who has had a bad day and still managed to focus on the practice? Who is surprised by how much they have written?
Repeat the process with a different subject. Spend 30 minutes on it. Then 5 minutes marking.
The session ends after 1 hour and 25. (Offer students the option to repeat the 40/10 split again instead of the 30/5 split - so they can opt in to a 1 hour and 50 minute session).
Cycle through 2 subjects of their chosen 5 every week, changing the pair each week. This means that the gap between each subject being revised is always 3 and 4 weeks. (Or you may decide to run this on two nights per week, so students get through 4 subjects a week).
One way of selling this is that students will do 80% of all the revision they ever need in these sessions.
What Teachers Need to Do
Give each student a Personal Learning Checklist (PLC), identifying the knowledge and skills they most need to practise.
Predict the most likely topics which will come up in the exam in 2025. For example, there are 7 possible questions which could be asked on An Inspector Calls. Look at the past questions and make a prediction of 2-3 of these as likely to come up. There is no time to do past paper questions on all of them.
Make sure the March mock is based on these predictions. (If these 20-30 students get a slightly higher grade as a result, that doesn’t matter - they will also get that higher grade if the predictions work out. They are also not likely to stop revising because they did well in the mocks. And the other 170 students will be better prepared for the real exam if any of the predictions come up - in my experience 50% of them will).
Source 3 past papers, or a set of past paper questions which fit the knowledge these students need (for grades 4, 5 and 6?), and cover the topics teachers identified in their predictions.
Signpost where students can revise for these predictions - preferably as hyperlinks. For higher mark questions, the most efficient resource will be model answers.
(We have to accept that these predictions are only guesses, and some of them will not come up in the exam. But we can’t do past papers on everything, so this will make our revision more efficient.)
Provide, hyperlink or signpost the mark scheme or model answers.
Mark the students' attempts, only giving feedback where students’ marking reveals a useful misconception.
What School Leaders Need to Do
Select the right students.
Launch the programme and the group, emphasising the efficiency of revision, the benefits of mutual support, the personal investment by leaders (you get paid the same, no matter what grades the students get).
Organise refreshments.
Supervise the room, helping students focus as in an exam, and congratulating them on their general efforts, releasing the pressure of exam practice by controlling the mood of the room.
Ensure students take 10 minutes to mark their work.
Liaise with teachers or heads of department, collecting and passing on the student work and making sure that it gets marked.
Set up a rota for manning the sessions.