Maths Easter Revision Course for GCSE pupils

Over the Easter break, 18 KGS L6th Maths pupils paused their revision to support 22 GCSE pupils from The Kingston Academy and Teddington School prepare for their GCSE Maths examinations.  Over the course of 4 days, pupils who had been identified by their school as having potential to improve their current performance with additional support, received small group and one-to-one support to boost their confidence and try challenging questions with encouragement and good banter! Each day different areas of focus were set up to allow pupils to navigate and target areas of weakness or interest. The classrooms were buzzing as pupils appreciated the opportunity to be helped by others who were in the same boat just one year ago, and therefore had little tips and insights to offer. The concept and execution were relatively straight forward. However, we hadn’t envisaged the overall impact of the revision course.

Although these schools ran their own internal revision classes, these had catered for these particular pupils.

Feedback at the time of the course was overwhelmingly positive, with the visiting GCSE pupils and our L6th giving the course an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5. When we reached out to the schools three months later, Claire Emmerton, Maths Department from Teddington School wrote:

“The course had a huge positive impact on our students. Their understanding and their marks on past papers improved. The biggest difference however was in their engagement when back in school and their motivation to study. I had a parent email me to thank me for organising it as it had got their child out of bed in the holidays and meant that when they got home from maths they studied other subjects willingly! 5 or 6 of the students who had been on the Easter course started staying after school on a Friday after school for up to 2 hours, that wasn’t compulsory! They gathered some of their friends with them and there was this amazing work ethic where they would sit and do maths on a Friday and have to be told repeatedly to go home!”

To have an impact beyond the course and the subject, feels like an outstanding achievement. Our own L6th pupils also benefitted, Anna L6 recently wrote about her experience:

“Participating in the maths revision course for Kingston Academy and Teddington school was a rewarding experience. Not only was I able to help GCSE students in preparing for their exams, but I was also able to improve my own confidence. 

The programme involved teaching a topic for a few hours, while GCSE students would pick out the topics, they felt they needed help with. This meant I got to speak with a variety of students which was great! 

It was an interesting opportunity for me as I had to explain topics in different ways to try and help very different students, which was difficult. This was because I had never thought about some of the topics in that way, but this also made it fun too. It was so rewarding to see the moment when a subject clicked for the students, and it definitely helped with my own revision too!  

I really liked how the course was setup too. It was spread over a week during the Easter holidays, which meant that you were able to see the same students again throughout the week. I could help them with other topics in a similar way to before and this meant they often understood or remembered the content a lot quicker! 

Overall, I was really pleased I helped the students in this course as I think not only the students benefitted from the experience, but I did too. I hope their GCSEs went as well as their revision did!”