Tassomai and Torquay Academy - An Award-Winning Team?

Tassomai is a BETT Award and ERA (Education Resource Awards) finalist for its unique content collaboration project with Torquay Academy. Find out what Reece Broome, Head of Online Learning, has to say about the program and how his school embraced Tassomai across every department.

By Reece Broome, Head of Online Learning, Torquay Academy

Torquay Academy is a non-selective school that fosters a strong sense of ambition for its students, regardless of their background. We seek to support our students in building strong, positive habits around their learning. In order to achieve this goal, we partnered with Tassomai to overhaul our homework system and boost student engagement.

Our principal, Steve Margetts, brought in Tassomai in 2016 as one of a number of methods to raise attainment in science. Five years ago, fewer than 50% of students passed GCSE science. Over the last 4 years, alongside workbooks, curriculum changes and prioritising subject specialist teaching, Tassomai has been used as the core part of science homework for our students. This combination has resulted in an 80% pass rate for the last two years, so something is clearly working!

Building a bespoke curriculum

Torquay Academy approached Tassomai in January 2020 to discuss collaborating on a project to reform homework and personal study across KS3 and KS4 for the entire school. Murray Morrison, Tassomai’s founder, and Sally Clegg, their Head of Content, visited the school in March to discuss the scope of such a collaboration and to listen to the ideas that had been developed at the school.

Teachers across all subjects developed their own set of questions with an emphasis on topic mastery and terminological vocabulary; these formed the basis for homeworks in all subjects. The idea was to build a bespoke set of homework to match the learning from our curriculum in an accessible software, which would allow teachers to easily monitor engagement and academic progress.

Having already established a relationship with Tassomai and a strong understanding of its algorithmic models and personalised learning, more teachers wanted to see if their content could be adapted to the platform. Staff undertook training sessions in how to use a purpose-built content generation system and were then able to write their own content. Tassomai explained how its learning model works and how quizzing is not strictly about assessing knowledge, but rather a means of implanting knowledge.

Building content across multiple subjects

Many of our teachers worked over lockdown and the summer holidays to produce 25,000 new questions covering: French, Spanish, English, Design & Technology, Childcare, Geography, History, Media, Vocabulary, Health and Social Care, IT, Religious Studies, Construction, Automotive Studies and Product Design – all tailored to fit our schemes of work for year 7-11s. Tassomai’s team then built that content into the platform so that it could set students daily homeworks.

We built our own custom monitoring system, which auto-populates with data from Tassomai so that we have instant access to every learner’s homework completion and gives us live leaderboards and outputs to inform staff of which students are falling behind on homework.

For me, the biggest impact is for the students. They will feel the effects of Tassomai, as we have already seen in science. They now gain more key knowledge across all their subjects, and the knock-on effect is huge. This increases their chances of achieving higher grades at GCSE, opening doors that weren't available to them without it.

Teacher workload

Previously, homework cost staff a combined 100-150 hours weekly in preparation and administration. This was a significant drain, using time that could otherwise be spent on teaching, intervention, enrichment or wellbeing. We used to have to mark 32 sets of homework and then decipher a students’ strengths and weaknesses. Tassomai now does this for us and is much more efficient.

The bespoke tracking system we’ve created is amazing - it saves so much time processing the data, so heads of year get the exact info they need each time they check completion rates. The overwhelming majority of teachers only have to focus on the positive: inter-house competitions, praise for individual students and informed, personalised reports home to parents.

Remote learning

The full program started in early September, but students are already realising the benefits of Tassomai on a whole school level. They are finding the questions easier by the end of the week - they are getting quicker at it. If further lockdowns occur, Tassomai will once again be a vital part of our curriculum. It will be set across all our subjects to be completed every single day, as it was in the most recent lockdown.

Changing homework forever

I firmly believe that this collaboration marks the start of a sea-change in the very notion of what homework is and how it is set for students, parents and teachers alike. Tassomai gets right to the core of a fundamental cog in the machine of success for students: knowledge retention.

Introducing Tassomai to a multitude of subjects will be a game-changer for our school, as we’ve already felt its effects in Science. This collaboration has been a unique opportunity and one that we will see the positive effects of for years to come. We have created an online tool like no other to support our students in memorising the core knowledge they need in order to be successful.

2021’s ERA and BETT Awards nominations

Tassomai and Torquay Academy are finalists in the “Collaboration Between School and Supplier” category at this year’s Education Resource Awards. Tassomai are also ERA finalists in 3 more categories: Supplier of the Year, Secondary Resource - Tools for Leadership, Management & Assessment, and Outstanding Achievement During Covid-19. The winners will be announced in an online ceremony on May 21st.

This year Tassomai are finalists for five BETT awards, including ‘Collaboration with a School’ for our work with Torquay Academy. We are also finalists for Company of the Year, Best Educational Resource for Parents or Home Learning, Secondary Content, and Classroom Aids for Learning, Teaching and Assessment. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on July 1st.

Keep an eye on our social media to see if we win! You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn.