What is the simplest and most cost-effective way to
take all students up a grade at GCSE and A Level?

Leaving aside those students who, you are sure, going to get top grades no matter what, everyone has the ability to go up one or two grades if they will only make a simple change to their approach to learning.

All they have to do is improve the way they focus on the learning, when they are writing essays, making notes, and undertaking revision. Improve the focus, and up goes the grade.

Now as you will know, focus relates to something very simple – the ability to screen out distraction and instead pay total attention to what is being learned. When focus is high, then the time taken to learn anything is reduced and learning becomes much more productive.

So our question becomes: what is the simplest way to raise the focus of students?

The answer is to get rid of the one factor in learning that interferes most strongly with a focus on the subject. That factor turns out to be the way in which students make notes.

If they are making notes by hand, for example looking at a book or a whiteboard, and then looking down at the page on which they write, they are focussing so much on the action of looking and writing that the meaning of what they are writing is less likely to sink in.

In short, their notes become far less meaningful because their brain power is spent on the looking up and down and the subsequent handwriting, rather than on the information.

On the other hand, if the student can touch type, then the student can read the text in a book or on the whiteboard, and then copy it down in full or in note form, while reading.

The learning thus takes place while the note taking is happening, and when the student returns to the typed up text, the learning is already in the brain, waiting to be enhanced.

Unfortunately there is one snag. Most students can’t touch type, and most schools don’t provide them with any touch typing training. Some schools claim that they do so but only point their students to free touch-typing programs on the internet. By and large they don’t work because they consist of little more than repeated exercises with no motivation for the student to keep progressing and no means for the teacher to track progress.

Worse, these programs tend to contain adverts (which is why they can be provided for free) which distract the user. Thus students don’t learn to touch type, and then believe that they “can’t touch type” – which is a fallacy. 99% of the literate population can learn to touch type.

There is however a program that is widely used in schools – Typequick, offered by Type&Test Ltd – which not only teaches students to touch type quickly through a professional, detailed online learning system, but also offers a way for the school to earn income from it, if parents choose to buy their own copy.

You can read more about Type&Test at www.typeandtest.com and you can also find details of the system that many schools use in order to earn additional income from parental purchases by clicking here. Alternatively if you have any questions please do call 01480 861867 or you can make contact by completing an online enquiry form, available here.

And of course once parents realise just how touch typing is helping their children to get higher grades – as well as giving them a solid advantage when it comes to applying for jobs and university places, then they do tend to buy.