Serious independent study is the key to grade enhancement. The only issue is how best to get the students to adopt it.

It has been widely observed for many years that students who achieve the highest grades are those who engage in productive independent study.

Because of this it is fair to say that virtually all questions relating to raising students’ grades at GCSE are in fact questions that relate to how one can get students to focus on serious work beyond the classroom.

Such independent study has two preliminary requirements for it to be truly effective. First, the student obviously has to be studying items in the syllabus. Second, the student must learn in the right order, always building on existing knowledge.

With focussed and directed work of this type students can work independently both at home and at school. The issue then is not, “will the student go up one grade?”, but rather, “how many grades in how many subjects?”

This approach has been developed over the past 15 years, with the results measured in research across over 400,000 students who have used the approach.

The results show that 60% of all work done via our approach is completed outside of school hours. When asked if they enjoyed working in this way, 83% of students said, yes they did.

In essence, the findings show that a student who works on the program for 10 hours during a school year will go up on average 3.5 grades. Those who really apply themselves can go up much more than this.

You can read more about this remarkable approach to raising grades at GCSE on our website at www.samlearning.com/independent

Alternatively you can call us on 0845 130 4160 for more information.

Do you have dozens of trips going out every year? Do you have an activities week where everyone is doing something? Managing the money plus all the forms and other checks, can be a big administrative headache, but the Private Funds Manager software can really help.

Whether you manage trips through a central bank account and accounts system, or have it separate, PFM makes it easy to enter, manage and export information.

This easy to use software :

Synchronises with Sims.net (and other pupil records) to import student information

Allows unlimited trips/events/accounts to be set up and payment schedules allocated

Records not just financial information, but consent forms, passports etc

Processes cash, cheques, DD/SOs, bank transfers and chip and pin, and prints receipts

Links with all major online payment systems (Parentmail, Parentpay etc)

Generates invoices, statements, letters, lists and debtor letters

Produces trip lists, parent contact lists, medical lists and payment reports for chasing up.

Links with Word, Excel and smartphones, and provides a wealth of other reports.

The program comes with free of charge online training for all your staff for the first three months, as well as the option for onsite setup and training. We are really proud of our backup, support and training and go out of our way to know your setup personally so we can really help.

We run free online demonstration sessions, and would love you to take a look at our system. Click here for schedule and bookings.

The software costs £195 for primary schools, £395 for secondary school for a whole school, one off purchase option.

For further details please visit our website www.istekuk.com, call 01722 413255 or email info@istekuk.com