10 recommendations to help students make progress in GCSE maths and English resits

Contents

• Executive summary
• Introduction
• Recommendations
• Annex 1: Criteria for inclusion in our sample
• Annex 2: Progress scores achieved in 2025 for resit students completing a two-year study programme that year

Executive summary

The maths and English condition of funding (CoF) requires post-16 institutions to continue teaching these subjects to students who did not achieve a grade 4 or above in GCSE maths and/or English at 16.

The CoF policy is controversial. The requirement to continue studying is unpopular with students and can be difficult for institutions (particularly those with large cohorts) to resource and administer.

But securing a grade 4 in GCSE maths and English opens doors for young people that would otherwise be closed. They are gateway qualifications that enable students to progress to Level 3 study, higher education, apprenticeships and employment. There is also evidence that making progress below the grade 4 threshold is meaningful in its own right.

The aim of this good practice guide is not to debate the pros and cons of the Condition of Funding policy, but to highlight the approach taken by the colleges and 16 to 19 academies where students make most progress in maths and English resits.

The guide is based on a series of interviews and focus groups with leaders, staff and resit students in 11 sixth form colleges and 16 to 19 academies; all have a substantial cohort of resit students and high GCSE maths and English progress scores (which show the distance travelled between performance at the end of Key Stage 4 and the end of post-16 study).

Based on the approach taken by these colleges, we have developed the following 10 recommendations that can be used by all post-16 institutions to inform the development of their resit offer:

1. Make a fresh start

Many students had a poor experience of GCSE maths and/or English at school. The colleges explicitly present the resit as a different course, that is taught differently. Staff recognise students’ previous frustrations and seek to move on from them. Clarity of purpose is key. For students with a grade 3, the aim is to achieve a grade 4 as quickly as possible. For students with a grade 2 or below, the aim is to make one grade progress per year.

2. Get induction right

Effective induction combines motivation with diagnosis. Students need to understand why progress matters for their own future, while teachers need an up-to-date and detailed picture of their knowledge, skills and confidence. Expectations are set at a high level, and confidence building is a key priority. Early assessment is used to understand each student’s previous GCSE result and inform decisions about teaching and examination entry.

3. Make a quick start

It is important to move as quickly as possible to delivery. The colleges place students in classes and begin teaching immediately, while continuing diagnostic work alongside delivery. The period between enrolment and the November examinations is deliberately intense. Early feedback and achievable ‘quick wins’ help students to establish productive habits and see that progress is possible.

4. Make resits an integrated priority

Resit provision is treated as high profile and high status within the colleges. In practical terms, senior leaders establish common expectations for attendance, punctuality and effort, prevent clashes with work experience and other activities, and ensure appropriate facilities are available. Close working between maths and English departments, pastoral teams and SEND staff is essential.

5. Timetable generously and separately

The colleges typically provide four to five hours of classroom teaching per subject each week, or slightly less teaching supplemented by timetabled support. Shorter lessons spread across the week are preferred to a small number of long blocks and are always delivered as distinct subjects rather than absorbed into vocational lessons. Class size and setting arrangements vary, but timetabling provides space for sufficient repetition, continuity and one to one support.

6. Invest in subject teachers

All the colleges use maths and English specialists to teach GCSE resits. Successful departments allocate resit teaching according to expertise and temperament, give it equal status with Level 3 teaching, and develop collective responsibility for results. Exam-board marking and professional development, as well as common planning and moderation, help teachers to develop a precise and shared understanding of what distinguishes work below and above the grade 4 threshold. The most effective resit teachers are patient, reliable, nurturing and relentlessly positive.

7. Measure and track everything

Successful resit teaching is data-rich and replaces the single GCSE grade with a granular and continually updated picture of each student. Diagnostics, classroom checks, timed assessments, mock examinations, and question-level analysis identify specific misconceptions and gaps. The resulting information is used in a short feedback loop: assess, diagnose, adapt teaching, provide usable feedback and reassess. Data is also used to track attendance, punctuality and participation in support activities.

8. Focus on exam technique

The colleges all focus heavily on exam practice: how marks are awarded, how to decode questions, how long to spend on each section, when to move on, how to show working and how to recognise common traps. Repeated exposure to examination questions and conditions reduces anxiety and makes successful techniques habitual. Timing was repeatedly identified as an essential skill by teachers and is a key area of focus.

9. Adapt to individual student needs

The importance of one-to-one support cannot be overstated. The colleges combine a common curriculum with precise adaptation. Students starting from grade 3 may need targeted repair of particular gaps and an early opportunity to reach grade 4; those starting from grade 2 or below are more likely to require deeper reteaching and a longer route. Tailored interventions, responsive classroom teaching and carefully used technology are all used to meet the individual needs of students.

10. Be relentlessly positive

Positivity was the thread running through every college. High expectations are combined with patient and relentless encouragement. Students have realistic conversations about their starting points and likely timescale, and understand the value of each incremental step forward. Staff reinforce this, make successful former resit students visible, and consistently communicate the message: you can do this.

Next steps

None of the colleges identified a single intervention as the explanation for their high progress score, and not all adopted the same approach in specific areas. But there were some clear areas of commonality: high-profile, high-status resit provision; sufficient and protected curriculum time; specialist teachers who believe in the students; a laser focus on the exam’s demands; rapid and granular use of data; individual adaptation; and whole-college support for attendance and progression.

The recommendations in this guide can be used to inform the development of resit delivery in all post-16 settings, even those with larger and more heterogeneous cohorts (although recruiting and retaining a very high number of subject specialists can be a major challenge). With the right status, structure, teaching and support, students can make better than expected (and in some cases outstanding) progress.

To share and promote good practice in maths and English resits, SFCA has established an online hub for members to accompany the publication of this guide. To register for the hub, or to find out more about this guide, please email info@sixthformcolleges.org

Acknowledgements

This guide was written by James Kewin and Noni Csogor at the Sixth Form Colleges Association. We are enormously grateful to the college leaders, staff and students who participated in interviews and focus groups for this project. Particular thanks go to John Dunbar, Assistant Principal (Mathematics and English) and the team at Christ the King Sixth Forms.

Introduction

The maths and English condition of funding (CoF) was introduced in the 2014/15 academic year and requires post-16 institutions to “provide teaching and learning support to those on 16 to 19 study programmes and T Levels to improve their maths and English skills, where they did not achieve a grade 4 or above in GCSE maths and/or English at 16”.

The CoF policy is controversial. The requirement to continue studying maths and English is unpopular with students and can be difficult for institutions (particularly those with large cohorts) to resource and administer.

The policy is frequently described as a ‘resit treadmill’ that is demoralising for students – recent research from University College London found that having to resit one or both qualifications has a negative impact on young people’s mental health.

But securing a grade 4 in GCSE maths and English opens doors for young people that would otherwise be closed. They are gateway qualifications that enable students to progress to Level 3 study, higher education, apprenticeships and employment.

Government data shows that students who secure a grade 4 or above in both subjects are much more likely to progress to a sustained education or employment destination than those who do not (85% compared to 63%).

There is also evidence that making progress below the grade 4 threshold is meaningful in its own right. For example, making one grade progress in GCSE maths is associated with appreciably higher lifetime earnings.

The aim of this good practice guide is not to debate the pros and cons of the Condition of Funding policy, but to highlight the approach taken by colleges and 16 to 19 academies where students make the most progress in maths and English resits.

The guide is based on a series of interviews and focus groups with leaders, staff and resit students in 11 sixth form colleges and 16 to 19 academies (from this point described as ‘colleges’ for simplicity) with a substantial cohort of resit students and high GCSE maths and English progress scores. The Department for Education progress scores show the distance travelled between performance at the end of Key Stage 4 and performance at the end of post-16 study.

Interviews and focus groups were conducted between April and June 2026. Annex 1 sets out the criteria for inclusion in our sample. A full list of participating colleges can be found in Annex 2 along with their progress scores and number of resit students.

Table 1 summarises the prior attainment of students in the participating colleges. Of the 2,280 students resitting GCSE maths, 66% had achieved a grade 3 by age 16 and 23% had achieved a grade 2.

The picture is more complicated with English resit students. If a student has achieved a grade 4 in English literature, but not English language, they have met the Condition of Funding and are not required to continue studying. Despite this, all students in participating colleges continue to study English language, as it is a grade 4 in this subject that has currency with employers and universities. This is why almost a quarter of the GCSE English students in Table 1 had already secured a grade 4.

The average GCSE grade of students in the 11 participating colleges matched the sixth form college and 16 to 19 academy national average (2.8 for English and 2.7 for maths).

Grade at age 16	GCSE English	GCSE Maths
U	0.3%	0.0%
1	1.2%	4.9%
2	9.6%	23.4%
3	62.4%	66.1%
4+	22.6% (in English Lit.)	1.1%
No previous result	3.9%	4.6%
Average grade	3.2 (2.8 excl. 4+)	2.7
Total students	1,768	2,280

Table 1: Prior attainment of students resitting GCSEs in English and maths in 11 participating colleges 2022-24

In line with the Condition of Funding regulations, all students with a grade 3 were studying for a GCSE rather than an alternative ‘stepping stone’ qualification such as Functional Skills. Even students with a grade 2 were typically not enrolled on these alternative qualifications as they were generally held in low esteem and considered to have little currency.

Almost all students in the 11 colleges were either resitting English and/or maths alongside a Level 3 study programme, or as part of a dedicated Level 2 study programme (usually as a springboard to Level 3).

For those studying at Level 3, resit students in the 11 colleges were more likely to have special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) than non-resit students and were more likely to live in disadvantaged areas (51% were from the lowest quartile of neighbourhoods as measured by the Indices of Multiple Deprivation compared to 38% of their peers in the same colleges).

Based on our research, we have developed the following 10 recommendations that can be used by all post-16 institutions to inform the development of their resit offer.

Recommendations

1. Make a fresh start

Almost none of the resit students we met or interviewed wanted to continue studying GCSE maths and/or English, but – largely as the result of an effective induction process – almost all understood the importance of doing so.

Clarity of purpose is key – developing a clear and shared understanding between staff and students is one of the foundations on which outstanding post-16 progress is built. In most colleges, this can be summarised as follows:

·       For students with a grade 3, the aim is to achieve a grade 4 as quickly as possible.

·       For students with a grade 2 or below, the aim is to make one grade progress per year.

The period between the start of term and the November exams is a small but vital window. It is important that students – armed with a newfound clarity of purpose – make a fresh start during this two-month period.

Many resit students had a poor experience of GCSE maths and/or English at school. They were often in the bottom sets and/or taught by non-specialist teachers.

A key message to drive home is that students have a fresh start and (for those that will be entered for the November exams) an early opportunity to make progress.

Staff make it clear to students that they should expect a new approach, not more of the same. As one Head of Maths put it, “What we teach here is GCSE English and maths resits, not GCSE English and maths”.

One maths teacher asked all students to write her a letter on the first day of term setting out how they felt about embarking on the course. This was a useful way of surfacing fears and frustrations in order to make a fresh start.

While a clean break is important for students, it can be useful for colleges to understand how schools approach the teaching of maths and English GCSE. In practice, some had much closer links with local feeder schools than others.

Where there was a good relationship, these links were used to explore skills deficits and colleges were more likely to receive student and subject level information on Key Stage 4 performance.

2. Get induction right

Successful induction has two components. The first component builds on clarity of purpose to develop the right mindset. Several colleges found the five pillars of the VESPA framework to be useful with resit students, particularly the ‘vision’ pillar that draws a link between current work and future outcomes.

Rather than presenting resits as a compliance requirement (or indeed a condition of funding), colleges emphasise the importance of GCSE progress in aiding progression to education and employment, and supporting wider study programme goals. Expectations are set at a high level, and confidence building is a key priority.

The second component involves specific diagnostics: understanding the starting point of students and highlighting their strengths and areas for improvement.

The diagnostic element is important given how much learning is lost during the summer holidays. Colleges also have to make a very early decision about whether to enter students for the November exam (registration is typically a matter of weeks into the first term) and in some cases (e.g. home educated students, overseas students) there is no evidence of attainment at Key Stage 4.

It is important that the diagnostic is not used, as one college leader put it, “to disrespect the GCSE grade” but instead to build a more up to date and detailed picture of each student’s starting point.

While most students with a grade 3 are entered for November exams, this is not an automatic process in every college – the diagnostic process and early testing have an important role to play in this decision.

Most colleges do not enter students for both maths and English in the same exam series – a choice is usually made based on diagnostics, performance early in the term, and the likely destination of the student. A strong relationship between the Heads of Maths and English is important here.

For students with a grade 2, the chances of securing a grade 4 at the first opportunity are very low, particularly in maths, and entering them for November resits can be counterproductive. However, if a student has the potential to make one grade progress, they will be entered for the exam. This decision is made on a case-by-case basis – no college routinely enters students with a grade 2 in November.

3. Make a quick start

Colleges emphasised the importance of moving as quickly as possible to delivery. One college summarised their approach as follows, “GCSE resits are automatically added at enrolment, and are taught from day one. By the end of the first week of September, all classes are set and registers are accurate for the year”.

In most colleges, the diagnostic process continues alongside early delivery, “We have two formal assessments in September (week 1 and week 3), and schemes of learning are adjusted based on skills gaps identified in the two early diagnostics”.

An early priority is to get students into good study habits as soon as possible: “Get the basics right, give them feedback they can work on”.

The period between the start of term and November exams is deliberately intense. Students quickly move through the induction and diagnostic processes and are in lessons at the earliest opportunity with a focus on exam-focused teaching. Colleges repeatedly emphasised the importance of securing “quick wins” in the first two months.

4. Make resits an integrated priority

All the colleges we interviewed described maths and English resits as a strategic priority, but equally importantly, it was integrated with other strategic priorities. Senior leadership teams have an important role to play here. Resit provision must be treated as high profile and high status within the college.

For example, some colleges reported that in the past, work experience was scheduled at the same time as maths and English lessons and halls were not always made available for mock resit exams. Raising the status of resits within the colleges reduced these sorts of conflicts and made them easier for senior leaders to resolve when they did arise.

Resit students do not learn in a vacuum. All study English and/or maths as just one part of their wider study programme and their support needs must be integrated with that.

Attendance is a good example. It is common for attendance to be lower for resit classes than other elements of a student’s study programme. Irrespective of how effective a college’s resit delivery is, if students do not attend, they will not perform well.

Colleges emphasised the importance of focusing on learning behaviours and expectations. As one principal put it: “we set the bar high with students in terms of the importance of these subjects for their futures – especially in terms of attendance, punctuality and commitment to study. We expect the same for GCSE as for their main programmes of study”.

A recurring theme was the importance of ensuring strong links with pastoral and wider support teams, particularly for students with SEND.

5. Timetable generously and separately

Integration does not mean absorption – in the colleges we interviewed, GCSE resits sit within the overall study programme but are timetabled and taught as distinct subjects, led by the maths and English departments. Several leaders contrasted this with models they had encountered elsewhere, in which maths and English were squeezed into vocational lessons or treated as a bolt-on to study programmes (making it more difficult to ensure there is consistent specialist teaching and accountability).

Most colleges provide around four to five hours of classroom teaching per subject each week, or slightly less classroom time supplemented by a timetabled support session.

Several deliberately give GCSE resits the same timetable allocation as an A level in order to establish routines, revisit learning and respond quickly to misconceptions.

Colleges prefer shorter lessons spread across the week to a small number of long blocks; one leader argued that a lesson every day was ideal because students found it difficult to sustain concentration for two hours at a time. Even where 90-minute sessions are timetabled, breaks and changes are used between activities to keep students engaged.

While smaller classes can make it easier to provide individual help, colleges did not regard them as a prerequisite for success, and some reported no discernible difference between groups of 15 and 25. In English, a class can be too small to sustain discussion, paired work and a sense of momentum.

There is no universal approach to setting: some colleges teach mixed groups and differentiate within the classroom, while others separate students with a grade 2 from those with a grade 3 in maths, or organise groups around whether students are ready for a short route to the November examination or need a longer route to the summer.

Colleges also plan explicitly for the period between the November examinations and the January results. This is a difficult interval: students often believe they have achieved a grade 4 and disengage, but do not know the outcome for several weeks. Some colleges continue with the usual curriculum, but others introduce changes to maintain attendance and avoid drifting into a holding pattern. Examples include broadening English work to transferable reading and writing skills and consolidating existing maths knowledge through quizzes and competitions, including against other classes and institutions.

After the January results, some colleges collapse classes or redistribute students, using released teacher time for smaller-group intervention. Others deliberately keep reduced groups intact, particularly in maths, because students benefit from the continuity.

Collapsing works where it releases useful support without needlessly disrupting students who have already experienced repeated change.

6. Invest in subject teachers

All the colleges we interviewed use subject specialists – maths and English teachers – to teach GCSE resits. This usually means teaching GCSE alongside Level 3 provision, although some teachers choose to specialise in GCSE resits, especially those with school-sector expertise.

The key is that resit teaching is allocated according to expertise and temperament and not treated as low status work. It is also important that the entire department has a sense of responsibility for resit success as a key component of subject teaching.

Teaching GCSE alongside Level 3 provision can help to prevent resits becoming a professional or curricular backwater. It signals to students that their course has the same status as other qualifications, and allows teachers to bring the expectations, routines and subject knowledge of advanced study into the resit classroom.

Recent school experience can be particularly valuable, as teachers from secondary schools bring current knowledge of exam specifications and the experience of managing larger GCSE classes.

Every college emphasised the importance of encouraging teachers to mark for exam boards and participate in exam-board professional development. This strengthens understanding of mark schemes and moderation and the precise difference between work just below and just above the grade 4 threshold.

Other forms of professional development and space for reflection also need to be prioritised explicitly, e.g. through protected time for common planning, moderation, and the development of shared resources.

As well as having subject expertise, the most effective resit teachers are patient, reliable, nurturing and relentlessly positive. They combine strong behaviour management and high expectations with the ability to rebuild the confidence of students who may have experienced years of difficulty in the subject(s), and take pride in the success of every student.

Dedicated maths and English classrooms also help staff to establish predictable routines and keep whiteboards, visualisers, model work and revision resources ready for use.

All the colleges we interviewed not only use subject specialists to teach GCSE resits, but also value those teachers highly within the institution and ensure they benefit from the wider support structures in place across the college.

7. Measure and track everything

Successful resit teaching is data-rich. At enrolment, many colleges request previous scripts and question-level information where available from students and/or feeder schools. All run their own diagnostics and identify gaps using classroom observation early on.

The aim is not to retest students for the sake of it, but to replace a single summer grade with a current and much more detailed picture of where strengths and difficulties lie. As one teacher told us, “Every student who fails GCSE fails for a different reason”.

This level of information is often more granular than a college's main MIS system can accommodate. One college has moved to a separate subject-based system, while elsewhere teams use dedicated mark books and diagnostic grids to record performance by skill, topic and question type.

In maths, this might show misconceptions in algebra, ratio or data; in English, it might identify issues with reading comprehension, extended writing, vocabulary, accuracy and performance on particular exam questions.

Assessment continues throughout the year, generating further data. This included low-stakes checks in every lesson, fortnightly mini-assessments, monthly timed assessments and full mock examinations.

Some English departments use an ‘exam wrapper’ for each paper: after marking, the teacher and student identify question-level strengths, record a target, and return to it during the next cycle of practice.

The strongest systems form a short feedback loop:

• assess a clearly defined skill;
• identify individual and group misconceptions;
• adjust teaching, practice or intervention;
• give prompt, usable feedback; and
• reassess to establish whether the response worked.

Data is also used to track attendance, punctuality and engagement with online resources and participation in support. This allows maths and English teams to work with other subject tutors, progress mentors, learning support staff and parents before a pattern becomes entrenched. In one college, missed lesson time was recorded as ‘hours owed’ and students were expected to make it up through supervised independent study time.

The precise mechanism matters less than the principle that absence from resit lessons should trigger the same level of response as absence from a student's main programme.

Leaders use cohort and class-level information as well as individual data. Value-added and pass-rate information by class help departments to identify variation, share effective practice and maintain the same high standards and expectations that are in place for other provision. Used well, this creates constructive professional accountability.

8. Focus on exam technique

As we noted earlier, clarity of purpose is key. The aim for all students is to either secure a grade 4 as quickly as possible or to make one grade progress per year. Acknowledging this transactional purpose often increases student buy-in. One English teacher told us she starts each new cohort off by telling them: “I know you don’t want to be here; my job is to help you get out as soon as possible”. This honesty and shared sense of purpose build stronger student relationships.

Related to this, the colleges we interviewed all focused heavily on exam practice: how marks are awarded, how to decode questions, how long to spend on each section, when to move on, how to show working and how to recognise common traps.

In English, departments explicitly teach a repeatable approach to each question type, using structured question booklets and modelling successful extended responses paragraph by paragraph. In maths, precious whole-class teaching time zeroes in on the knowledge and techniques most likely to yield marks on the foundation paper.

Timing was repeatedly identified as an essential skill by teachers, with many departments instructing students to tackle longer or higher-value sections towards the start of the exam, while their concentration is strongest, rather than treating the paper as a purely linear exercise.

Repeated exposure to the exam through mocks, whether under exam conditions or as a whole-class question-by-question exercise or somewhere in between, reduces the risk that anxiety or poor time management will derail students.

This approach requires a shared standard across the department. The strongest models have a common scheme of learning, centrally developed resources, and common assessments and moderation. At one college, all teachers worked from shared lesson plans and booklets that were reviewed collectively after the examinations and refined for the following year.

Consistency means that students encounter the same methods, expectations and language, and leaders can interpret assessment data across the cohort. One college attributed the stronger performance of its English provision relative to maths partly to the greater centralisation of curriculum and resources in that department.

Shared resources also make better use of specialist time. Past-paper questions, model answers, solution videos and question-level practice can be developed once, improved through use and deployed quickly in response to a diagnostic need. In some English provision, preparatory reading was ‘flipped’ outside the classroom so that lesson time could focus on supported application and writing. Shared digital platforms give students access to resources between lessons.

At the same time, standardisation should provide a foundation to rely on rather than a prescription. Teachers need the autonomy to spend longer on a topic, change the order of activities or select different examples when the evidence from their class justifies it. As one teacher put it, the aim is to “Teach as a class, but treat students as individuals”.

The shared standard defines the destination, assessment and core methods, but professional judgement determines the best route for a particular group (and keeps experienced teachers engaged in developing their craft).

9. Adapt to individual student needs

A recurring theme was the importance of one-to-one support. This is something that most resit students had not experienced at school. A tailored and personalised approach to resit delivery was a consistent theme across all colleges.

Relatedly, a common curriculum is most effective when combined with precise adaptation. Rich datasets and frequent assessment are routinely used to inform decisions about what each student needs next.

The clearest distinction is between students starting from a grade 3 and those starting from a grade 2 or below. For many students with a grade 3, the task is to repair specific gaps, improve examination technique and reach grade 4 quickly.

Students with a grade 2 are more likely to need deeper reteaching and a longer timescale. In maths especially, some colleges teach these students separately or delay their first GCSE entry. As one assistant principal put it, entering students before they are ready risks the January message being: “Congratulations – you are still bad at maths”.

This does not mean jettisoning the ambition for every student to achieve a grade 4, but students value realistic conversations about the route and timescale. A student with a grade 2 may be told that a grade 4 in November is unlikely, while being reassured that one-grade progress is valuable and that the college will prepare them for a later examination.

Honest optimism is more credible than promising an immediate pass that the evidence suggests is improbable.

Starting points also differ within subjects. English language resit cohorts include students with a wide range of prior experiences, including many who have already passed English literature. Nationally, 74% of students achieve a grade 4 in English literature by age 16, compared with 60% in English language. Several colleges reported that the prioritisation of English literature over English language in local schools had increased their resit cohort.

Departments therefore need to distinguish between students who primarily lack language-specific exam strategies and those with wider needs in literacy, vocabulary, English as an Additional Language (EAL) or extended writing.

In maths, detailed topic analysis may show that a student's grade conceals a very specific gap caused by disrupted or inconsistent prior teaching.

Adaptation takes place both within lessons and around them. Teachers use starters, visualisers, confidence checks and mini-whiteboards to identify misconceptions in real time, then circulate during independent practice to give individual help.

In one classroom, simple routines such as phone hotels (keeping phones in the classroom but in pigeonholes at the front of the class) materially improved concentration.

Close links with SEND teams ensure that individual support plans and normal ways of working are reflected in both lessons and examinations. Learning support assistants told us they were most effective when involved in planning and given access to the resources and answers they needed.

Homework and independent study are also adapted to student needs, both as a cohort (which types of work can students complete independently without guidance?) and as individuals (which exercises should be assigned online to which students?).

Technology can make this personalisation manageable at scale. Colleges use platforms to diagnose gaps, push different resources to classes or individuals, provide instant feedback and record independent practice.

One college uses an AI-enabled maths platform to set further work automatically in response to the questions a student has previously answered incorrectly, and another has produced videos working through the correct solution for every question on every mock paper completed by students during the year.

A generic online package is no substitute for specialist diagnosis, thoughtful curriculum design or a teacher's relationship with a student, but it can support the feedback loop.

10. Be relentlessly positive

Positivity was the thread running through every interview. One principal summarised it neatly: “Positivity is key – these students do not want to be studying these qualifications, which is why a different approach is required.”

Another leader said the key was “Praise, praise, praise,” as many students feel they have only previously experienced failure and need to understand the value of each incremental step forward. One maths teacher told us he tells each of his classes they are in “the top set” (because there is no bottom set!); again, this is an experience that students have often never previously had.

This positivity is not vague encouragement or false reassurance, it is used to help students celebrate small successes and believe in themselves. At the same time, students are expected to attend, practice, respond to feedback and treat the course as seriously as the rest of their study programme.

Some colleges use former resit students and subject-specific role models to make success visible. The result is that students understand they have a mountain to climb, but can see the route to doing so and celebrate each step towards the summit.

Annex 1: Criteria for inclusion in our sample

There are 11 sixth form colleges and 16 to 19 academies that in 2025 had:

• GCSE maths and English progress scores above 0.35 and 0.49 respectively – the sixth form college/16 to 19 academy sector average (the average for all schools and colleges in England is 0.05 for maths and 0.17 for English)
• A cohort of at least 100 students resitting GCSE maths each year

And meet at least one of the following further indicators:

• Over 200 students resitting maths each year, i.e. achieving strong progress across a very large cohort
• Over 50 students resitting English each year and attaining progress in English above 0.73 (the 75th percentile for the sixth form college/16 to 19 academy sector), i.e. achieving excellent progress across a significant cohort
• Maths progress above 0.64 (the 75th percentile for the sixth form college/16 to 19 academy sector), i.e. achieving excellent progress across a significant cohort

All 11 colleges agreed to participate in this project and are listed in Annex 2.