Students make better progress with GCSEPod – is your school using it?

International schools subscribing to GCSEPod report a direct correlation between usage and student progress...

With the rapid growth in the number of international schools opening their doors around the globe, international schools, particularly those teaching the British curriculum, are reporting huge challenges when it comes to attracting high-quality teachers from the UK; supply, quite simply, is unable to keep up with the demand.

So with schools increasingly turning to the local jobs market to fill posts that would once have been filled by teachers from the UK, the need for education resources that help teachers to raise attainment are more important than ever before.

GCSEPod offers just that, so it’s little wonder that it is now found in more and more international schools and is making a real difference to the progress students make.

GCSEPod is an award-winning education publisher of digital learning and revision content for students working towards GCSE and IGCSE qualifications in KS3, KS4 and beyond. More than 20% of the UK’s secondary schools – and more and more international schools – utilise GCSEPod’s vast content library to teach lessons, set homework, monitor progress and provide additional learning material to meet the needs of individual students.

GCSEPod creates digital learning that appeals to ‘millennials’ – today’s generation of learners who consume content through desktops, laptops and mobile devices (73% of usage is outside school hours).

Its teacher-written subject knowledge content is created in bitesize digital chunks, mapped to exam specifications. That ensures a much broader exam coverage and an ability to react far more quickly to curriculum change than traditional publishers. The content doesn’t go out of date as print resources do. Covering more than 20 subjects for not more than the cost of a set of text books or study guides for 1 or 2 subjects, GCSEPod offers phenomenal value.

Launched initially as a revision resource, GCSEPod is increasingly being used for flipped learning and as a classroom resource, freeing up valuable teaching time to allow teachers to do what they do best – teach.

GCSEPod is helping to reduce teachers’ workloads, allowing them to spend greater time monitoring their students’ progress and providing tailored intervention. The service includes a 25,000 strong Question Bank which helps teachers to set relevant work quickly and easily. The system even assesses students’ responses to identify knowledge gaps and then provides focused learning playlists in order to fill any holes in their understanding.

For international schools this means that all teachers, regardless of origin, have a vast library of quality, UK teacher written audio visual content at their disposal to use in the classroom and as a homework and independent learning tool.

The creators of GCSEPod recognise that it is no longer acceptable to control how content is drip-fed to audiences; instead, the audience want complete autonomy to watch, read and listen as they choose.

They understand exactly how to provide content to ‘millennials’ who have grown up with Instagram, You Tube and Facebook and now expect immediate access to content of choice across an array of technical devices.

Nord Anglia International School in Dubai is one of a growing number of schools across the UAE to subscribe to GCSEPod and within weeks of launch GCSEPod was proving popular, not only among students but for teachers and parents too.

Graham Howell, assistant head at the school said: “Students and staff love it and parents have been completely amazed by what GCSEPod has to offer. GCSEPod provides an awful lot of extra support to students and is particularly useful for students that are travelling a lot or involved in lots of other extracurricular activities. They can simply listen to the Pods in the car to keep up with school work.

“Because of the huge success we’ve had, we’re now looking at a new BYOD policy to help make GCSEPod, and other online tools, even more accessible.”

GCSEPod has wide appeal and is well used across the board by students of all abilities. Subscribing schools have served up compelling evidence that GCSEPod makes a difference; the more a student uses the resource, the greater the progress they make.

To find out more about how GCSEPod is helping international schools to stand out from the competition contact gill.key@gcsepod.com