8000 hours learning, 1.5 million questions answered – EP sets high school alight within weeks of introduction
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Bremer State High School in Queensland, Australia, is seeing the impact of EP within weeks of introducing the platform. Students are clocking up hours of self-managed learning, enjoying internal and external competitions, and exploring subject areas outside of those offered by the school. Teachers are equally as motivated, impressed by the quality of the activities, the differentiation, and the simplicity with which they can track student progress. For Ryan du Toit, Head of Teaching and Learning, it is proving to be one of the most straightforward curriculum innovations he has ever implemented.
About Bremer State High School
Bremer State High School is a large metropolitan school with over 2,000 year 7 to 12 students and 160 staff, located in Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. Ryan du Toit is the Head of Teaching and Learning with responsibility for pedagogy, curriculum resourcing including the school based laptops and online programmes. He leads the introduction of curriculum innovations, and has been at the helm of the implementation of Education Perfect (EP).
Providing a consistent student experience
The high school wanted a platform that would provide students with a consistent learning experience, no matter the curriculum area, “We wanted the students to know what they were required to do in class, at home, during assessments, across all forms of instruction, and no matter who was teaching them. We needed to consolidate our digital platforms and EP provided the subject coverage we wanted, accurately mapped to the curriculum, with powerful student tracking and assessment tools.”
Immediate impact
The school introduced EP seventeen weeks ago and Ryan has heard only positive affirmations, “The response from staff has been overwhelmingly encouraging. The Head of Maths, who twelve months ago was a complete sceptic, now couldn’t be more supportive, even using the word ‘outstanding’. Our students have already answered one and a half million questions.”
High levels of engagement
Ryan and staff at Bremer High School have been amazed by the student take up and the levels of self-management, “You know a resource is a success when students are choosing to go over and above the amount of work that has been assigned by teachers. We’ve students studying in the school holidays. To date they have spent eight thousand hours on EP. Some students are even studying extra subjects such as Te Reo Māori and Latin. It is wonderful that we can provide content across so many subject areas and at every level, differentiated for students requiring extra support or extension.”
The school has further motivated students by holding internal school competitions, “Our maths department set up a competition with prizes for the Year 9’s and they answered 11,000 questions in total. The engagement was huge.”
The students themselves discovered an external maths competition run by EP, “Without any direction from teachers or dedicated time in class the students answered 55,000 questions, finished 46th overall and eighth in Queensland – and that was within ten weeks of us introducing the platform!”
Ryan has seen firsthand how engaged the students are with EP, “I had a meeting and had to leave my Year 9 maths class. They studiously worked through assigned tasks whilst I was away. The realities of teaching today are that you can’t always be in the classroom, for example next week we have an athletics carnival and 1200 kids and half the staff are out of school. The high levels of student engagement with EP means that for those not attending, class time is still used productively.”
Outstanding support and exciting future developments
The school is only just beginning its EP journey and now plans to build more internal assessment into the platform,
“Our staff can already see the impact that EP is having and the potential it offers
in terms of a better use of teaching time. Without any push from me, teachers are looking to build in pre and post-tests. The implementation is happening naturally which as the lead, I just love. We already have two expert and eight advanced level members of staff, with one not far off guru status.”
Staff had one whole school professional development session with EP at the start of the year and have another booked with a focus on how to embed EP into the assessment processes, “The support from EP has been outstanding. Shoutouts to our rep Paddy and our curriculum specialist Elise. We are also very excited to be trialling EP’s new AI features next term which will provide more nuanced responses to long form answers in curriculum areas such as English and Social Studies.”
It is increasingly hard to be responsive to the needs of every student and provide a consistent learning experience. Bremer High School has implemented EP to help teachers across all curriculum areas provide personalised learning in a familiar and uniform environment. Within a matter of weeks of introducing EP, students are taking ownership of their learning, increasing the numbers of hours spent engaging with learning, and even exploring other passions and interests outside of those prescribed by the curriculum. We look forward to touching base with the school again in the near future to follow their EP journey into assessment and AI.
