Preparing their students for GCSE Exam success
St Mary’s Church of England High School, an 11-19 co-educational comprehensive in Hertfordshire is committed to providing an outstanding educational experience to its students. This highly successful school saw Year 7 admissions rise from 150 to 240 this year.
St Mary’s invited Study Skills Zone to work with Year 10 & 11 students with their ‘Drive for Results’ programme in addition to running a ‘Parent Power’ workshop in the evening. These sessions proved to be highly effective and were followed up with the ‘5 Steps to Exam Success’ programme for Year 11 and 6th Form.
Feedback from teachers included: ‘The sessions proved to be extremely successful in that students were enthused and motivated’.
‘Students have reported back that they find it a very effective way of revising’.
As well as embracing the ‘Growth Mindset’ concept, the school also recognised that key to students’ successful revision was employing the Active Learning Techniques advocated by Study Skills Zone. Students were introduced to a range of revision strategies and the school supported students by providing all Year 11 pupils with their own ‘Revision Toolkit’.
‘We have implemented lots of changes in terms of intervention and revision’.
‘Parents were encouraged to be interactive with their children’s learning and this made them recognise that learning and revision is a skill in itself’.
‘Thank you for the opportunity to attend the very useful Revision presentation on Thursday evening and for arranging the activities for the students during the day. My daughter said that she found the day very useful.’
The first school in Hertfordshire to adopt a ‘Whole School Study Skills Strategy’
The experience of working with Study Skills Zone was so successful that St Mary’s decided to run a full week of study skills programmes for every year group from Year 7 to Year 13 next year. In addition there will also be six one-hour Parent Power workshops.