Students who achieve higher grades often tend to be more self-directed and thus have the focus to spend time learning independently outside the classroom.

However, many students struggle in this area, and simply telling them to do a bit more studying outside schools hours doesn’t really help them at all.

So how can students be taught to take responsibility for their own learning?

The answer must lie in directing their learning to exactly the right area so that the student is never attempting to learn something without first having the basic pre-requisite knowledge.

If we then add elements of fun and competition to the self-directed learning, the students’ perspective of their work changes radically. They are encouraged by their success and become less likely to claim that the subject matter is boring.

These are the tenets upon which the SAM Learning approach has been built. What’s more, given that 60% of all work done on SAM Learning is completed outside school hours, it becomes clear that students with access to the system are indeed choosing to log in during their own free time.

Better still, a recent survey of 35,000 students who use SAM Learning revealed that 83% enjoy using the service.

You can read more about SAM Learning as a method of developing independent study at www.samlearning.com/independentlearning. Alternatively you can call us on 0845 130 4160 for more information.

Naturally we have checked with schools that are using the SAM Learning system to see what they think about the notion of independent learning.

Here are some comments that we received:

“SAM Learning has helped transform our learning culture“.
Paul Hughes, Headmaster, St. Joseph’s School

“You know straight away how you’ve done rather than waiting for the teacher to mark homework“.
Year 11 Student, Garibaldi College

“SAM Learning gives them that element of independence“.
Stephanie Wood, Head of MFL, Stoke Park School