Case Study
Outstanding results and GCSEPod
Newcastle High School for Girls once again celebrated outstanding GCSE exam success this summer. In a year which has seen major changes to both sets of GCSE exams, girls and staff at the school rose to the challenge and reported a sharp rise in the number of top grades. “This year, we saw more students than ever use GCSEPod for GCSE learning and revision. GCSEPod is to education what Spotify is to music.”
Details
Newcastle High School for Girls
Newcastle High School for Girls once again celebrated outstanding exam success this summer. In a year which has seen major changes to both sets of exams, girls and staff at the school rose to the challenge and reported a sharp rise in the number of top grades.
Stephen Lovell shares his experiences…
Amongst its year 11 students the school saw a huge increase in the number of A* grades; and a staggering two thirds of all grades were said to be A*s and As.
The school, which teaches girls from 3-18 in its brand new purpose built setting, is one of a growing number of schools across the UK to subscribe to GCSEPod – the award winning digital learning and revision content for students working towards GCSE and IGCSE qualifications.
GCSEPod provides short sharp bursts of audio visual content mapped out to the GCSE curriculum and the main examination boards which students and teachers can access across an array of devices.
GCSEPod coordinator at the school, Stephen Lovell, who is also subject lead for History is confident that the digital resource, which the school adopted back in 2012, has had a significant role to play in the girls’ success and says there is a direct correlation between students’ usage and the outstanding progress they made this year.
He said: “As a school we are committed to creating the best environment for our students to learn and to thrive and are never complacent about what we can offer.
We recognise and encourage the role that technology plays in 21st century education and adopted GCSEPod back in 2012, long before mobile technology was as widely accepted as it is today, as part of our ongoing commitment to our students.
“In the past, study guides and textbooks were as linear as terrestrial TV programming but for our young students today who expect immediate access to content of their choice on demand across all devices, learning aids must be as flexible as their favourite streaming services.
“GCSEPod is to education what Spotify is to music and allows our students to access a wide range of relevant, quality, professionally written content tailored to the GCSE curriculum. With such easy access to relevant content which has been designed for short sharp bursts of study, it is little wonder that the girls have quickly adopted it as a go-to resource for their studies.
“Likewise, a growing number of teachers in school are now using GCSEPod as a teaching resource, using the video podcasts to introduce classroom topics or using the assignment function to set homework tasks.
“GCSEPod is one of a number of resources we offer to our students to help them to succeed but more importantly we work closely with each and every one of our girls to ensure that they thrive at school and achieve their full potential and in turn do themselves proud and lay the foundations for a great future.”
The Results
“This year, we saw more students than ever use GCSEPod in preparation for their exams and it is no coincidence that our highest users were also our students who made the most progress. Without a doubt there is a direct correlation between usage and progress; in some cases students who accessed GCSEPod heavily throughout the year leapt two grades in their final examinations.”
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