A cohort of fourteen students in the O level maths programme, all of whom had sat the first practice examination with totals between forty one and sixty three.
Those totals are almost useless on their own, and the interesting part came from breaking them down by topic. Eleven of the fourteen were losing most of their marks in the same two places: questions requiring them to rearrange a formula before substituting, and questions where the information was in words rather than in symbols. Both are grade eight skills. Neither had anything to do with the topics they were revising.
So the next six weeks were mostly rearranging and reading, which felt to the students like going backwards. Three parents asked us about it and one moved their son elsewhere.
The second practice, seven weeks later, moved the cohort's median up by a margin we did not expect from two skills. The third moved it a little further. What mattered more to us is that the gains came in topics we had not taught during that period, because the two skills were underneath all of them.
We now break down the first practice by topic for every student and send it home with a written note, which we did not do before this group.
