When changes to the key stage 4 curriculum were introduced a few years ago - with schools shifting from modular to linear exams - this posed a challenge for teachers. How could we help pupils succeed in their final GCSE exams without the safety blanket of common assessments to wrap around them?

This issue was prevalent in my school, a comprehensive secondary for girls with a joint sixth form. I teach English and our department’s results are historically strong. In general, our pupils want to achieve and parents are supportive.

However, this proactivity was manifesting in ways that were concerning: there was an over-reliance on revision sessions and an expectation that they would be offered to pupils throughout the school week and during the holidays, so as to meet the demands of the new exam structure.

Responsibility for success seemed to have been placed at teachers’ feet rather than with the pupils - and that was helping no one.

We wanted to force a change. We wanted to stop revision classes altogether. So, what did we do? We turned to the research.

Making the change

Could we really stop offering revision sessions? As you read through the literature on effective study and revision habits, the same things come up over and over again: cramming does not work, but repeated exposure to - and work with - the content over a longer period of time does. There is a great assessment of the literature by psychologist Professor John Dunlosky on the Tes Podagogy podcast (bit.ly/DunloskyPod).

So, when our second cohort taking the new GCSEs started Year 10 English, we changed the way we worked. They received the usual course overview and words of encouragement but there was a new focus on memory and on personal responsibility for study. We made it clear that we would not be offering revision sessions at the end of Year 11 and so pupils could not rely on that crutch in a last-minute attempt to cram knowledge.

At the same time, there was a whole-school focus on planning for memory. We delivered presentations to pupils and parents in order to provide a collective understanding of how to build memory and schemas to aid learning. In addition, as part of CPD, some teachers completed disciplined enquiries into the effects of retrieval practice, where pupils engaged in self-quizzing at home with the expectation that they would be tested in class.

Building on this, the English department created knowledge organisers and quotation banks for literature texts. We used these for retrieval practice, setting specific sections for independent learning.

With my class, I used five retrieval questions at the start of lessons and varied these throughout the week. For three lessons, the questions tested current content, content from recent weeks and also from previous topics. In the two additional lessons, I focused all five questions on quotations from the text currently being studied.

I found that pupils engaged well, and my lower-attaining pupils particularly increased in confidence.

But we were not done there. On top of this, I wanted to support pupils to increase independent self-study in conjunction with directed tasks.

Rosenshine’s “Principles of instruction” (American Educator, 2012) confirms the positive impact of modelling to provide cognitive support. I already modelled writing and analysis regularly, but I began to consider the benefit of explicitly modelling note-taking to ensure pupils had effective material to use for independent retrieval and study.

I introduced my class to the Cornell system, which uses a cueing column, notes and a summary section to facilitate the transfer of new knowledge to existing schemas.

After explicitly modelling the note-making process, I gradually withdrew support over time. The pupils made notes in lessons and reviewed them at home, writing prompt questions for retrieval in the left-hand column and a short summary of key ideas.

To see if this was working, I used low-stakes quizzes based on specific lessons. Pupils performed better in these tests than in a comparative topic without a focus on note-making. My enquiry was small, but pupils reported a positive impact on confidence and organisation, too.

A recent study echoed my findings, showing pupils who used the Cornell system performed better in a delayed reading comprehension assessment than those who used personal systems (“Using the Cornell note-taking system can help eighth grade students alleviate the impact of interruptions while reading at home”, Evans and Shively, 2019, bit.ly/StudyCornell).

The bigger picture

But did all this shift in focus actually work for the pupils in the long term? Did we really abandon revision sessions altogether?

Year-group progress was monitored along the way, and we judged that certain pupils required intervention for English language and so we provided a block of lunchtime sessions early in Year 11. Typical findings were that some pupils chose not to attend, despite contact with parents.

But, on completion of the course, we did not offer revision sessions. If pupils came to see teachers individually for clarification or help, they were supported in line with their individual needs. But no one in my class asked for extra revision sessions. They were in the habit of studying as they went along.

What impact did it have on results? A positive one. English literature results increased over the first two years of the specification, from 75 per cent attaining grades 4-9 in 2017 to 87 per cent in 2018.

The experience has taught me that we don’t need to stress ourselves and our pupils out by running revision session after revision session in the run-up to GCSEs.

With long-term planning and a specific focus on studying for memory across KS4, everyone feels more secure going into the exams and the need for revision classes has disappeared.

Joanne Tiplady is an English teacher, research lead and literacy coordinator at Beverley High School in East Yorkshire. From September, she will be teaching at a new school

This article originally appeared in the 23 August 2019 issue under the headline “End cramming to put pupils on the road to success”