The summer is nearly over and  I’ve been thinking through my plan about what I want to do with this blog this year and have come up with an idea …

…  I’m going to document “a year with year 11” and what I do with “those” groups ..

So, I teach the crossover groups … you know the ones … those aiming for grade 4s (and 5s and sometimes above!) and the intention is that I want to document my thoughts, ideas and also what actually gets delivered … it won’t quite be a lesson by lesson account but it will give you an idea on the pace we get through stuff and also the principles behind what we do ( I say “we” because whilst Seager and I are now in different schools we often check in where each other is in the scheme of work and we are usually within a topic of each other!) 

So the year starts with reviewing our performance from Summers exams  … the kids at the school I work at did us proud … they did really well and Seager had an amazing year at his new school – his school beat the results that got them the accolade of being the Most Improved School last year (now done it at two schools!) so kudos to the team there. Despite that, there is always room for improvement, there are always lessons to be learnt from reviewing past performance at both a school level and also a national level  … I’m also realistic and know that we can’t correct or improve every aspect so will look for what we call “low hanging fruit” (I will use that phrase a lot this year) at both levels and try not to get into analysis paralysis.

AT A SCHOOL LEVEL

We use Edexcels results plus (and I’ve put some screen shots at the end of this post that shows the step by step process for extracting what I do) … there is so much more that can be done but this is a good starting point. I know some of you will delve deeper than I do ( I know Seager looks at skills etc) but for me, I just don’t see any additional benefit that is gained from the additional analysis … what I do suits my purpose. The important thing is that you engage with the data … so please do look at it … if you are with another board,  use whatever data they  provide … I was with some schools delivering some CPD earlier this year who hadn’t  looked at their data from 2024 and it was lovely to see so many opportunities that the HODs went away being able to put some simple things in place. Don’t see them as weaknessses … they are opportunities for improvement.

Anyway, like I say, you can get lost in the data that is available so  I take a high level view to present to the team at some point during the inset days or shortly after … I basically look at the question by question perfomance compared to the “edexcel average” … which looks like this: 

If you wish , you can also download the data … I keep it simple and just screen shot straight onto a power point and add a screen shot of specific questions where we didn’t beat the average (in this case just two questions on F paper 1 … #justsaying) … I’m lucky there aren’t that many questions (so you could just provide copies of the paper if there are shed loads of questions to look at) and end up with  this … the discussions that come out of it when presented to the team are usually fab. It is a year 11 issue? A sh1t question? Can we address it within our SOW lower down the school? 

I also add in the top 10 skills and skills to improve  from the “highlight report” … I don’t necessarily agree with the descriptors used as they are “exam board speak” and I want to more specific … but more on that soon.

I also like to look at two things AT A NATIONAL LEVEL

ONE: Grade boundary movements. I’ve put together a PPT that shows the movements in grade boundaries for each board and also comparing June 25 with June 24 (I’ve actually put this in the Grade boundary and data folder of the teacher toolkit on JustMaths Online) already … I don’t draw any conclusions its to provide a starting point for discussion. 

TWO: Using the fabulous Skills Maps from Pearson I do a deep dive into the performance at a question by question basis ready to use in Department meetings … this is going to the subject of another blog post next week as theres quite a bit of work that goes into these but basically I rank the questions based on their position in the paper, and also based on the performance from the students and look at the difference between the rankings. I then look at the questions at the two extremes i.e. questions that based on their placement in the paper that the cohort found easy or hard. I also add in the best and worst performing questions. Again, its a starting point for discussion and depending on your context can give you some “low hanging fruit” in terms of topics. So far I’ve done the foundation papers (again, they’re already in the teacher toolkit)  

And ONCE I’VE GOT THESE DONE  … I’m ready to go back … apart from the three items below my WORK to do list is pretty empty (my JustMaths/Life to do list are however, OFF THE SCALE) … 

(1) Dealing with some reviews of marking  (it feels like there’s more borderline reviews to be done this year though!!!) … .. chase permission forms!

(2) Make 5 or 6  phone calls to parents I couldn’t get hold of in the summer to agree for their son/daughter to move to either mine or the other Lead pracs “maths form” group (I’ll do a post about this at some point) 

(3) Send bread and butter starters to print. 

So back to returning to school I’ve previously written about the nerves that hit at the start of every new school year and it never gets any easier … having done this a fair few years I know it will be fine so I can push those thoughts about not being able to teach out of my mind to more serious things … how on earth am I going to get my hobbit feet into proper shoes?? I seem to have spent most of the time in flip flops or barefoot! Where are my proper bras? Where is my lanyard? What the feck did I do with my school bag? etc etc 

If you’ve got this far … I will give you my number one hint as a reward … the first thing I do when I jump out of bed on the last day of the holidays is to change the bedsheets … there is nothing better than getting into fresh bed linen and I’ve then got something to look forward to all day!! (I’ve gone one step further this year and bought myself brand new bed linen … I know … so rock and roll …I’ve found some base sheets that don’t come away from the mattress from a company called Rise and Fall (I think!) … not cheap but sooooo worth the money!) I also then have all day Sunday having accomplished at least something!! 

Back soon with more top tips

Step by Step Instructions for Performance by Paper from Results Plus: 

I hope you find this self explanatory after you’ve logged in using the all important authenticator app of course you’ll get this: 

Then choose “Cohort results” and “cohort paper analysis”: 

Choose the exam session you want: 

From the below, click “view paper analysis” 

And from the below you can choose your papers. It is this that I screen shot and stick into a PPT. It is from this screen that I get the higlight report for each paperand screen shot that too. 

The final step is to add in any questions from the papers where rhe performance was not green when compared to the National Average.