The Sixth Form College Farnborough

Background

The Sixth Form College Farnborough is situated in Farnborough, Hampshire and provides education for 16-19 year olds. The College currently caters for around 3,700 students and admission is mostly from Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire. The College was granted academy status in 2017 and is part of a multi-academy trust called 'The Prospect Trust'. The College has both new and internally progressed GCSE maths students for resits. Mark Eccleston, Curriculum Manager GCSE Mathematics, explains how the college uses Access to Scripts to support around 150 students who take GCSE maths by identifying strengths and weaknesses, building schemes of work as well as providing additional lessons to ensure students are exam ready.

We identify weaknesses and support students where they need it the most

The beginning of the academic year is extremely busy for us and it can be very difficult to establish where learners are, in terms of their abilities. We ask all our internally progressed learners, who didn’t get a four, for permission to access their scripts. We then look through them and prioritise any scripts we have queries about. We also find it helpful to look at the ResultsPlus analysis to see which questions students have struggled with, and then look at the scripts to identify where exactly they made mistakes. Having access to the scripts means we do not have to do any additional diagnostics at the beginning of term which is already so busy. It’s wonderful we can access these scripts for free, especially as some exam boards charge for the service.

Historically, we enter all GCSE maths resit students in November, but we are reviewing this. We want to identify those students who would benefit from a fast pace of learning for November exams, and those who might prefer to take more time and be entered in June. It’s challenging for us to make such a quick judgement, especially for those students who just arrive as we have no background of their abilities. Students can be very close to a Grade 4 in June at school and then go backwards, for whatever reason, come September. There are also students who have had excellent support at school, and have only narrowly missed out on a Grade 4.

Seeing their achievements encourages students to adopt a positive mind-set

Where we have the scripts, we look at them to see where students have done well and identify any gaps. We may have a case where a student has scored one mark for a particular question, but other students have not scored anything at all. This is a great way of building confidence if the students feel like they could be failing again. We really want to encourage them and tell them, “look you got it right”.

If on a specific question most students have scored two out of four, but another student hasn’t scored anything at all, then we can identify what they need to do to score two. Once they have this mind-set shift, they can look at the opportunities. Students then realise they could have scored marks, but were too afraid to write anything down because they knew they couldn’t answer the question as a whole. It’s really helpful to address the blockers and make them realise they are trying to beat the average for every question, not answer every question. Essentially, they are trying to beat the person next to them and not beat the paper. This approach helps build students’ confidence and they become more willing to attempt questions.

In January we hold one-to-one meetings with students following the release of November scripts. This time is used to inform individual students about their misconceptions and highlight any poor exam techniques. The impact of students seeing their own mistakes, usually in areas they have been warned about, is far greater than trying to second guess where they made mistakes.

For the coming year, we are introducing a fourth 90-minute period of maths for November entries, so students will have a total of six hours of lesson time until November half-term. For the first two weeks we will cover exam techniques, and in weeks four through to five the students will be doing mock papers so we do not have to cover these during lesson time. Once the November exams are over, the students drop back down to four and a half hours.

The outcome – perseverance brings success

We have seen that once students overcome their own insecurities, and embrace what they can do, they become more successful at completing answers. When they start answering questions, and realise they have gone so far, they feel they may as well carry on because they have already put so much effort in. This approach allows us to break the barriers, ease their maths anxiety, and calm their nerves. Having access to scripts is not about highlighting students’ mistakes, it’s about learning from them.