Driving Measurable GCSE Progress
- More assessments, faster feedback
- Increasing GCSE grades
The Goal
Hummersknott Academy, part of the ALP Trust, sought to boost student performance in GCSE English Language through targeted, personalised feedback. In June 2025, teacher Dominic Webber used Olex extensively with his top set Year 10 English Language class – whilst intentionally not using it for English Literature. This created a natural comparison to measure Olex’s impact directly against a control group within the same cohort.
The Impact with Olex
- Students performing ‘Above Expected’ increased 143% with Olex
- Plus students performing ‘Below Expected’ reduced by 46%
- No significant change in English Literature results over the same period, where Olex was not used – strengthening the case that Olex was the differentiating factor
- Students received rapid, detailed feedback on their work, allowing them to iterate and improve far more frequently than traditional marking would permit
- Increased assessment frequency – freed from the burden of manual marking, Dominic was able to set more assessments than would usually be possible, compounding the feedback effect
"The impact of Olex on my top set class has been quite remarkable. The students have benefited not only from more deep and thorough analysis of their work than any teacher could manage to provide, but as a result of the reduction in teacher marking workload, they've been set more assessments than they ever usually would.
The combination of more assessments and more feedback has created a formula for progress.
Dominic Webber, English Teacher, Hummersknott Academy, ALP Trust
How They Did It
- Dominic used Olex throughout the spring and early summer term with his Year 10 top set for English Language, while English Literature remained a control group – taught in exactly the same way as before, without Olex
- Students submitted handwritten work, scanned it in class, and received personalised feedback within minutes – detailed analysis of their work that would have taken hours to produce manually
- The time freed from marking allowed Dominic to set assessments more frequently, creating a tighter teach-assess-improve loop than is typically possible
- May and June mock results were compared across both subjects, with the contrast in outcomes providing clear, school-generated evidence of Olex’s impact
"I feel like I couldn't do without Olex in my classroom now and the students generally feel the same as well."
Dominic Webber, English Teacher, Hummersknott Academy, ALP Trust
What's Next?
- Using analytics to create bespoke revision resources for year 11
- Rolling out Olex to Key Stage 3
- Exploration of usage in humanities and live in the classroom