In the coming days, GCSE students will collect the results of two years of their labours and begin planning for the next stage of their lives – whether that be another step-in academia, or out into the working world.

But as the class of 2019 departs, the onus immediately falls back onto school leaders to prepare for a new year, and an entirely new set of learners – and a larger number of them, too. 2018 saw the largest proportion of secondary school class sizes of 31 or more pupils in 35 years, figures which are set to increase this coming September.

The DfE projects that the number of pupils in state secondary schools will be 10% higher in 2023 than at present, and the swelling numbers are putting pressure on teachers, whose already heavy workload is being exacerbated by them having to dedicate more time to administrative tasks, such as reports and test marking.

The growing classroom is inevitable, and so education leaders must find ways to overcome the challenges it presents. So how can this be done?

Wand Education is the technology platform that supports primary & secondary school teachers by providing access to a growing marketplace of high-class online content and learning support materials, automated marking and one-click reporting.  As a GSCE content support specialist, the Wand Solution is helping the forthcoming challenges with an exciting new package.

WestExe

Preparation in Education is everything. Planning has become essential in schools and academies to build a resolute template for success in the classroom and beyond.  Teachers are savvy, so let us help with that forward-thinking process by revealing the next level of packages available to Wand Education subscribers.

West Exe School, part of Ted Wragg MAT in Exeter, is one of Wand Education’s pilot schools. They have been working with Wand since 2017 as their testing and assessment system implemented at the school level.  West Exe will be providing the following top-level teaching resources:

The Package 

Easy to use multiple-choice questions to assess students’ knowledge and measure progress and attainment, the termly packages for each subject will include:

• first week: baseline tests
• final week: final test to measure progress
• in the middle: 9 homework tests

What to Expect

Each subject and each topic will consist of 1 pre-test worksheet + 1 post-test worksheet + 9 homework worksheets, coming to an Estimated total of 1300 new worksheets for Wand users to download.  These will provide an average of 20 activities per lesson with a total combination of over 20,000 activities being readily available for use.  29 secondary school subjects covered will include; Art & Design, Biology, Business Vocational, Child Development, Chemistry, Computing, Citizenship, Dance, Drama Vocational, Economics, English, French, Food Vocational, Geography, History, Health & Social, IT Vocational, Mathematics, Music, Music Vocational, Product Design, Core PE, Physics, Physical Education GCSE Photography, Science, Spanish and Sport Vocational.

Benefits of the package – why should teachers use it

• Reduction of teacher workload – already-made high-quality tests + automated marking + reports
• Clear evidence on the progress of students -instant progress reports at school, class and student level
• Easily identified gaps and knowledge

Timeframe 

1st of September is the planned launch date with a few days extra outlined for segmented package release.

If you would like to know more about the West Exe package or any other of the teacher resources Wand can provide, please contact the support team on support@wand.education

To kick off your free trial with the Wand platform, visit the sign-up page here