Case Study

“It’s not uncommon for companies to make bold claims to reel you in, only to fail to live up to expectations.

But to coin a well-known advertising slogan from a few years back, GCSEPod does exactly what it says on the tin.

Details

The Baines School

Baines’ School is a secondary school in Poulton-Le-Fylde, Lancashire, England. It was founded through James Baines’ will in 1717 and is a former grammar school. It was one of three schools set up in Baines’ will, the others being at Marton and Thornton.

It states it’s dedicated to improving the working lives of teachers and making GCSE learning stick for students. And after four years of using GCSEPod to help our older Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 students achieve the best they can, I’m not going to argue with that assessment.

I’m not going to lie. I was sceptical when we first bought into the platform. I’ve been a teacher at Baines School for the past 21 years, and I’ve seen a fair number of short-lived fads come and go. 

I’m pleased to say that GCSEPod hasn’t been one of them.

Baines School in the market town of Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, can trace its history back more than three centuries to 1717.

It was then that local banker and merchant James Baines left money in his will to provide for the care and learning of young people in Poulton.

The former grammar turned secondary school – which moved to its present site in the late 1800s – currently has around 850 students aged 11-16.

For the past four years the EdTech platform GCSEPod has played an integral role in not just students learning journey, helping revive their thirst for knowledge with its award-winning curriculum content, but also improving the working lives of teachers through its innovative assessment tools and ready-made assignments.

GCSEPod can pinpoint knowledge gaps through Check and Challenge – a unique assessment system that evaluates students’ knowledge and understanding and provides scaffolded support through hints, multiple choice options and feedback; to automatically send boost Pod playlists to help fill holes in comprehension; track and monitor usage; and even mark homework.

Here Antony Mycock, a geography teacher and Baines School’s Assistant Headteacher, explains why he’s a fan of GCSEPod.

“It’s not uncommon for companies to make bold claims to reel you in, only to fail to live up to expectations.

But to coin a well-known advertising slogan from a few years back, GCSEPod does exactly what it says on the tin.

It states it’s dedicated to improving the working lives of teachers and making GCSE learning stick for students. And after four years of using GCSEPod to help our older Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 students achieve the best they can, I’m not going to argue with that assessment.

I’m not going to lie. I was sceptical when we first bought into the platform. I’ve been a teacher at Baines School for the past 21 years, and I’ve seen a fair number of short-lived fads come and go.  

I’m pleased to say that GCSEPod hasn’t been one of them.

Given how much of my teaching career I’ve devoted to Baines School, it’s safe to say I love the place and what it stands for. Our founder, James Baines, understood the benefits and opportunities a good education could offer the young people of this area – and it’s an ethos we’re pleased to still adhere to more than 300 years on.

But as a school we recognise we can always be doing more. And revision – for a multitude of reasons – was a barrier for many of our students. It’s the reason we initially subscribed to GCSEPod.

Turn the clock back to 2017, and GCSEPod wasn’t as comprehensive and clever as it is now.

But one of the things I like about the platform is that it doesn’t stand still; it is constantly evolving, keeping up with the latest digital and educational trends, and coming up with new and innovative ideas to help both students and teachers achieve the best they can.

The way we use GCSEPod now is vastly different to how it was four years ago when we saw it purely as a revision tool; GCSEPod has continued to adapt and to offer a flexible, easy to use, fully supported, blended learning experience.

We have adopted a three-strand approach.

  • As a brilliant revision tool
  • Secondly, we see it as a valuable catch-up tool for identifying learning and knowledge gaps and plugging them through things like Check and Challenge, assignments, and the Boost Playlists.
  • Thirdly, we’re using GCSEPod to help staff save curriculum time. We’ve missed valuable time in the classroom since March 2020, and as a result time is currently at a premium, so we’re heavily utilising GCSEPod for flipped learning.

Of course, at the end of the day it’s results that count. It’s about achieving the best outcome for our students.

So, has GCSEPod delivered?

With teacher assessed grades used for the last two exam years, we must go back to 2019 to the last time students sat any external GCSEs. And in that year, of the 10 students who broke their target grades by the largest margin, eight were among our top 10 GCSEPod users.

I now use that statistic unashamedly when I’m talking about GCSEPod at parent information evenings and with our young people.

As another example, I have a current Year 11 geography student who used to be nervous at assessment times because she didn’t trust her own knowledge and understanding. Her classwork would always be spot on, but put her into a test situation and she would crumble.

This year she has accessed 162 Pods, completed 200 Check and Challenge questions, and got 88% of those right. Her grades in class have improved and I have seen a positive difference. I think part of that is that she is more confident and secure in her knowledge using Check and Challenge and GCSEPod.

There are other factors. For one, she is back in school instead of being in lockdown. But GCSEPod is a key feature of what she does.

It is obvious that GCSEPod must go hand in hand with other things. If a student is never in school, GCSEPod can’t replace classroom learning, but if they are attending, they are trying hard in lessons and they decide to invest their time in the platform, then I believe there are real benefits to be seen.

That’s not to say that GCSEPod can’t help outside the classroom. During the Covid lockdowns and periods of student self-isolation, because GCSEPod has become better, cleverer, and more interactive with things like Check and Challenge, the assignments and adding new content, it has been successfully used by teachers for blended learning.

We still need to support those who must be absent from school. But the difference now is that those students who are off because of Covid are ill and can’t do five hours of learning a day. GCSEPod allows you to pare content down.

Using my geography class as an example, last week I had four students off ill with Covid.

Rather than getting them to cover all the content I had done in our lessons, I shrunk that down, gave them a list of Pods to watch and asked them to summarise each of them. They weren’t getting the same experience as in class, but they were gaining the raw content and knowledge to keep them up to speed and allow them to continue to make progress.

What’s my favourite thing about GCSEPod?

Without a doubt, Check and Challenge. From a teacher perspective you know the right questions are being asked as they’re linked to the Pods connected to your specification.

If everybody is getting the same thing wrong, then I need to do something about it and reflect on how I delivered that topic. Without GCSEPod and Check and Challenge I may never have known until it was too late that my students weren’t secure in their understanding.

Someone asked me the other day what James Baines would make of the school that still carries his name 300 years on.

I think he would be very proud. Our strapline used to be ‘a modern school built on traditional values.’ I think that still stands. I believe he would be impressed that we are using as much technology as we can to supplement what we do as teaching practitioners for the benefit of our students.

The reason why he set up the school was for the benefit of Poulton’s children, and I believe GCSEPod helps us to fulfil that.”

The student gets instant feedback; if they get something wrong it tells them; they can use a hint if they get stuck, which I can see they’ve accessed and tells me they aren’t 100% secure in their understanding; and there’s no marking for me. It’s all done in GCSEPod and shows me who has and hasn’t got it – which could be a sign I haven’t taught something very well.

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