CST KS5 story…

A few years ago, our KS5 value-added was below national. We didn’t reach for gimmicks. We got serious about precision, challenge, and consistency, and it worked.

Our six-point plan:

 1. Raise the bar and show it. We rebuilt courses for proper challenge and made progress transparent through DPR. Everyone could see what “good” looked like, in real time.

 2. Test what matters, cumulatively. We brought in Total Knowledge Recall so students were held to everything they should know, not just last week’s lesson.

 3. Make private study count. Silent, structured, distraction-free. No theatre, just focused graft.

 4. Organise for success. Exam folders with the right materials, model answers, error logs, revisited often so revision meant something.

 5. Teach with the same routine, every time. Research-informed, KS4-style clarity: model → practise → check → fix. No roulette on pedagogy.

 6. Respond in the moment. DPR updates live, so reteach and intervention happen this week, not after the results day post-mortem.

What happened? TEA shifted first, then UTCN followed a year later: both moved from negative to well above national benchmarks. Same strategy, same pattern, a year apart, not luck, just disciplined execution.

This is the payoff when curriculum, teaching, and habits line up.

To the team, thank you. Your consistency, your belief, and your craft delivered this. You’ve shown that focus and intellectual ambition still change outcomes.