Buying
revision case study
Case
One
Susan Goodman
lives in Dulwich. Her daughter Rosa attended Alleyn’s
school. In 2005 she was taking her GCSEs. “We saw her
flounder in the mocks,” says Susan. “She’s severely
dyslexic and has had tuition over the years. Her school is
fabulous but there is just so much information that they
have to get through, she just didn’t know how to boil it
down for exams.”
Rosa attended DLD (Davies Langham Dick) for a week’s
revision course at Easter at “about £700, I think”.
[Five-day Easter revision courses presently cost £360 for
mornings or afternoons only. You can double up courses and
also take additional seminars.] She went on to get 10 A*s
at GCSE. Susan attributes this to the efficiency of a
crammer’s course. “She knew how to study after that. It was
like her brain started working.”
The Goodmans became complete converts to crammers. “We’ve
used them year after year. It gives you such a useful
structure, the bare bones of the course.” Rosa went on to
study at MPW (Mander Portman Woodward) for her French and
Spanish AS in 2006 and A2 in 2007. “The repetition is
really helpful for languages.” She got As in all her
subjects and is currently on her gap year considering
offers from Bristol and UCL to study history of art with
Italian. “Not bad for a kid called severely dyslexic at the
age of five,” says her mother.
And there were other benefits. “She made such smart
friends: it turned her into a Sloane. Most of the other
kids were from boarding school.” Not surprising, perhaps,
when the family’s total expenditure on crammers runs into
“several thousands”. It’s money that Susan feels is well
spent. “It gave her a sense of knowing the parameters. It
gave her confidence, academically and socially.”
www.dldcollege.co.uk
www.mpw.co.uk
Case
Two
Cynthia
Stamm-Clarke’s daughter Mary also went to DLD for an Easter
course in 2005. “She was adrift with her sciences and we
bought the double science GCSE revision week for her. It
really did help. She got A*s.”
In 2006, however, their experience was not so happy. “She
tried to do physics AS level but was really struggling. We
tried the same thing again in 2006, but I didn’t feel the
crammers helped that much because whereas at GCSE you
basically just have to regurgitate material, at AS level
there is a depth and a need for independent thought. You
can’t just boil that down to a week.”
Cynthia is a teacher herself. “Subjects where there is more
thinking, more concepts, like English or science, may be
harder to process quickly,” she suggests. At any rate, Mary
was “not particularly happy” with her AS experience and
abandoned physics. She’s gone on to Nottingham Trent to
study journalism.
Case
Three (possibly not useful)
Tessa Holroyd
was firmly opposed to buying advantage for her children.
But when the staff at her local comprehensive in Newport
Pagnell promoted a home tuition kit for those struggling
with English and maths, she was interested. The home
presentation was “very hard sell” and in 2003 the family
signed up, at a cost of £2,500 in monthly payments over two
years.
Her son Tom, then beginning Year 10 and his GCSEs, was keen
enough to do the half hour’s work each day and send off the
weekly assignments. Keen enough for two months. Reluctant
for another month. Then he flat out refused.
The home course required a lot of self – or parental –
discipline. There were other difficulties, too. It used
different maths methods from Tom’s school, which he found
frustrating.
“What made me really upset,” says Tessa, “is that no one
ever rang up to see what was happening. We got a couple of
weedy letters – where is your homework, Tom? – and if we
rang up the online helpline, which we did a couple of
times, they did advise us. But no one ever really engaged
with Tom. It was,” she says fervently, “such a waste of
money.”
Part of the sell for the course was the fact that materials
could be used for a sibling, so were not as expensive as
appeared. “Absolutely useless,” says Tessa. “My daughter
never looked at them once.”
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