Well, the time is finally here. Our revolutionary, completely free, GCSE Scheme of Work is now officially live and ready to be used!

I’d love to say that I could tell you all about our Scheme of Work in a few sentences, but that would be a lie. It simply would not do it justice. So, maybe wait until you have five minutes spare, get yourself a nice cup of tea, maybe even a biscuit, and then come back to this post.

Cup of tea in hand? Biscuit? Okay, let’s go.

Now, obviously I am ridiculously biased, but here are a six (everyone’s favourite perfect number) reasons why I am very proud of what we have created:

1. It is completely free, and always will be 
No hidden catches, no dodgy small print, no buy now, pay later. And not only is it free to use the Scheme of Work and the thousands of questions on the site, but previously premium features such as giving feedback, printing reports and measuring progress over time are also free. See this handy guide for ways to get the most out of these exciting features.

2. It contains top-quality, automated content 
All questions in the Scheme of Work have been provided by AQA, Edexcel and OCR, and are perfectly aligned to the new GCSE. Functions, Frequency Trees, Venn Diagrams, Invariance – you name it, we have it covered. So, if you want your students to be as prepared as possible for the demands of this new qualification, then this should prove invaluable. There are two year’s worth of quizzes, covering Year 10 and 11, Higher and Foundation. And once the Scheme of Work is set up, all quizzes are automated for the entire year. You do not have to lift a finger.

3. It measures progress
We don’t just provide one top quality assessment for each GCSE topic, we provide 3! The Baseline quiz is automatically set 3 days before students begin a topic, to give you a sense of where they are at coming in to the sequence of lessons. The Progress quiz is automatically set at the end of the topic, so you can see what areas your students have improved in. Finally – and this is my favourite – the Understanding quiz is set 3 weeks after the end of the topic, so you really know how much your students have truly understood, as opposed to relying on short term memory and mimicry.

4. It will save you hours 
How long does it take you to set homework each week, collect it in, and chase up those students who have conveniently left their books at home? How long does it take you to make a class-set of 30 books? How long does it take to give individual feedback, set follow-up work, and then mark that? Diagnostic Questions does all of that for you in an instant, allowing you to spend your precious time on the things that really matter.

5. It will help you do your job better
Using the Scheme of Work will not just save you time – it will allow you to do your job better. We don’t just just replace marking – we improve it. After marking a set of 30 books for 3 hours, what have you really learned about your students? We will show you the worst answered questions, and group students together by their misconceptions, revealing exactly why students do not understand a concept. By using our powerful data analytics machine, together with students’ explanations, you can quickly gain a deep knowledge of your students’ level of understanding and the specific nature of their misconceptions, allowing you to intervene accordingly and effectively.

6. It enables peer-to-peer learning 
It’s not just teachers that have all the fun. Students can reap the rewards from being in the largest classroom in the world. We all know that students benefit immensely by listening to their peers explain an answer or a concept. In school they may be able to do this with a handful of students at best. On Diagnostic Questions, if they get a question incorrect, students can benefit by reading hundreds of correct explanations, given by students from all around the world, until they find that magic one that makes sense to them.

I will be entirely honest with you – it will take you a little bit of time to set up the Scheme of Work. But I promise you that it will be worth it.

First you will need to choose your GCSE awarding body (AQA, Edexcel or OCR) and then use our drag-and-drop facility to map your scheme of work onto ours. This could take up to an hour to do Year 10 and 11 Foundation and Higher. But – and this is the best bit – once you have done this, you can sit back and relax for the rest of the year, as Diagnostic Questions will take care of everything else. The setting of all quizzes will be automated, and every time you log-in you will be presented with the kind of deep insights into your students’ understanding that really make a difference.

And we are here to help! Firstly, we have put together this handy guide which should get you up and running. But there is more! For the next few weeks we will have two dedicated members of staff here at Diagnostic Questions HQ whose sole mission in life is to help you get up and running with the GCSE Scheme of Work. They can help you with the mapping of your topics, the uploading of students, and the assigning of the Scheme of Work. You can get in touch by emailing us at [email protected]

So, just click here and log in to get started, and let the revolution begin!

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this email, and I really hope you and your students enjoy what we have created.

Craig