Digital learning and innovation

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Spotlight on innovation

Onscreen Assessment for GCSE English

Earlier this year, we announced our ambition to offer onscreen options for GCSE English exams.* 

Building on the success of our onscreen GCSE and International GCSE exams to date, we’re excited to be opening up more ways for students to best show what they know and can do in GCSE English Language, GCSE English Literature and GCSE English Language 2.0. 

* Subject to regulatory timelines and Ofqual approval 

Discover more

Digital learning support

Online teaching and learning support

We’re committed to helping teachers, students and families make the most of learning – whenever and wherever it happens. Our online, remote and blended learning hub is available all year round and contains free support and guidance in one place.

Discover our online teaching and learning support hub

Guides to The Future of Digital Learning

We partnered up with Headteacher Update and SecEd to explore what lies ahead for edtech – from best practice and personalised learning to closing the digital divide.

Primary guide Secondary guide
Listen to the podcast

Research and insights

The Pearson School Report

Since 2022, our reports have showcased educator and student views that have fuelled conversations from playgrounds to the Houses of Parliament. Now in its third year, the 2024 report will bring together over 12,000 teacher, student and sector voices.

  • 8 in 10 learners say technology makes it easier for all students to participate at school.
  • 48% of teachers say more needs to be done to tackle the digital divide in homes and schools.
  • More than half of teachers (55%)  say we need a better digital curriculum.

Find out more

Persona Life Skills

Alongside Persona Education and 200 GCSE resit students, we’re exploring effectively life skills can be developed and recognised using digital badges.

More about the pilot

Insights: Onscreen Assessment

Hear from Pearson and schools on our experiences of delivering onscreen exams in summer 2022 and recommendations on what’s next.

Read the report

Spotlight on onscreen assessment

Our report poses some of the big questions ahead for the sector: how do we facilitate change? What are the big opportunities? And what are the barriers?

Explore the findings

Award nominations for collaboration, innovation and impact

Recent news and blog posts

  • Teaching - the highs and lows. I became a teacher because I enjoy working with children, I want to make a difference, I get a lot out of it, I am good at it, it's my true vocation, it's challenging and offers variety.

    The good, the bad and the ugly of a career as a Primary teacher

    We recently did some research with our Primary Teacher Panel to help us understand how we can support you better.

    We've done other research into what you need from us in terms of resources, but for this particular study we wanted to understand what it feels like to be a teacher in the 2010s. We asked:

    • Why did you go into teaching?
    • What makes you feel appreciated?
    • What is hard about your job?
    • Why do you stay in teaching?

    The individual responses (around 200) were really fascinating and gave us an interesting and sometimes sobering snapshot of the realities of being a Primary teacher today.

    The infographic below showcases the most common responses we received. While there's probably nothing too surprising here for you we wanted to share it anyway because it shows some very clear themes emerging across everyone who answered.

    TeacherInfographic

    Do you agree? Is there anything you would add, or expand on?

    To see more from Pearson Primary, follow us on twitter, or like us on facebook.

  • The busy teacher/parent’s guide to the perfect World Book Day costume

    As World Book Day approaches (5 March for anyone who doesn’t have it etched into their brain yet), our thoughts have turned to the very important issue of The Costume.

    If you want to avoid a class full of Harry Potters and Elsas (not that there’s anything wrong with that per se, but variety is the spice of life) – or indeed an eleventh hour panic about your own costume – the key is preparation. You need to help get your children (and crucially their parents) inspired early and leave plenty of time for charity shop trawling and cardboard painting!

    With this in mind, here are a few costume ideas with literary credibility…

    Lewis Carroll

    Elena Schweitzer. Shutterstock

    Alice in Wonderland is brilliant fodder for fancy-dress, whether it’s the eponymous Alice, the Mad Hatter, Tweedle-Dum and/or Tweedle-Dee, or the Red Queen. While you might not have a sky-blue dress and white pinny in the back of the wardrobe – this could be a good investment for many a Book Day to come. Alternatively you could get creative with a white T, marker pens and felt for a Tweedle-Dum/Tweedle-Dee look. Especially good for twins!…

    Charles Dickens

    debr22pics. Shutterstock

    Tattered trousers, a granddad shirt, braces or a waistcoat, a few smudges on your face, and a flat cap – and you can legitimately claim to be any scruffy Dickensian orphan – from Oliver to Pip to David Copperfield. And for those of you out there with a carefully zipped up wedding dress still in its dust bag, how about layering on a few cotton-wool cobwebs to rock that Miss Haversham look. Or not…

    Roald Dahl

    alexsvirid. Shutterstock

    We may not be able to transform ourselves into Quentin Blake-style illustrations (more’s the pity) but we can accessorise. I fully intend to send my son to school this year with a large cardboard peach. Guess what his name is…

    Alternatively, if you aren’t lucky enough to be called James, you could try a mouse mask to channel Luke from The Witches – or if you’re a grown-up, gloves, wigs, thick makeup and constant remarks about children being smelly would also make for a passable costume from the same book.

    A.A. Milne

    Jules Selmes. Pearson Education Ltd

    Animals are fairly easy to pull off, and Winnie the Pooh has more literary credibility than the majority of stuffed toys. Dress in orange and black, create a tail out of stripy tights, check out the local party shop for a pair of ears and voila – one Tigger ready to go. And if you want to add in a little Buzz Lightyear, who’s to say you can’t.

    Roger Hargreaves


    Mr Bump. Courtesy of Ladybird Books

    The Mr. Men and Little Misses are the Kings and Queens of children’s literature. They’re cute, witty and there’s always a moral to the tale – ergo very educational!

    And with such distinctive characteristics, they’ve each got something to imitate: some blue facepaint and some bandages and voila, one Mr Bump. Admittedly other characters may require a bit more arts and crafts, but a big cardboard box and some poster paint, and you’re just a colourful mess away from the perfect personalised costume.

    Frank L. Baum

    SophieWitch

    Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz… need we say more? There’s so much scope here – some silver spraypaint, corrugated cardboard and a funnel gets you a tinman, a blue and white checked school dress with some plaits and some red shoes etc etc, but we’re rooting for the wicked witch of the West because of the potential for green-face paint. Always a winner.

    And some runners-up…

    • Anything Austeny or Bronte-esque – if you can find or make a dress!
    • The Dictionary/Thesaurus – fashion a cape out of pages from the dictionary, if you can bear to destroy one. A photocopier might help out with this!
    • Gothic Horror – Frankenstein, Dracula (with due care and consideration given to the audience!).
    • There’s this new thing called The Hunger Games apparently.
    • Charlie and Lola
    • Nursery rhymes
    • Narnia
       

    And if all else fails…

    Well, Harry Potter is popular for a reason… and Disney costumes are generally easy to come by. It’s not cheating if they made a book out of the cartoon, is it?!

  • CentreForum report backs judging pupils' progress

    Regular readers of this blog will know that we have long argued that the fairest and most effective way to judge schools is by the progress their pupils make.

    We’re delighted, then, to have launched a new report, together with the CentreForum think tank, on this issue: Progress matters in Primary too: Holding schools to account consistently.

    Following on from an earlier report on secondary school accountability, the report argues that pupil progress, rather than attainment, should be the principal floor target for primary schools, for the following reasons:

    • A progress measure encourages schools to focus on all pupils, because the performance of all pupils counts equally towards school performance by that measure. An attainment-based measure has the potential to encourage schools to focus more narrowly on pupils near the threshold, because it is here that schools stand to make the most gains in their measured performance. Consequently, pupils far below the expected standard risk being left behind, while those far above may not be adequately stretched.
    • A progress measure considers pupil performance in light of their individual starting points. In this way it is able to better identify the impact of the school from circumstances outside of its control, i.e. the prior attainment of its intake. An attainment measure puts schools with lower prior-attainment intakes at an inherent and unfair disadvantage, because such intakes are less predisposed to meeting the attainment standards.

    The report also addresses the thorny issue of baseline assessment, arguing that an effective baseline assessment, administered to pupils in their first half-term of Reception, is fundamental to creating a progress measure. It acknowledges that there are valid concerns around the introduction of a baseline assessment, but believes that these can be overcome.

    The report ends with two recommendations:

    1. Pupil progress is the fairest and most effective accountability measure, and should therefore be adopted by government as its principal headline accountability measure for primary schools.
    1. To support pupil progress becoming the principal headline accountability measure for primary schools, the government should provide clear, defensible evidence that the baseline assessment which underpins it is valid, fair and reliable.

    We hope that this report will prove useful in this highly-charged debate. Do let us know what you think.

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