Adaptive Revise shortlisted for BESA Award: Recent Feedback from Teachers and Students

We’re celebrating at Hachette Learning because Adaptive Revise is a finalist in the BESA Awards 2026 in the category of Secondary - Outstanding Curriculum and Assessment Resource. The BESA Awards shine a spotlight on leadership and innovation, celebrating the excellence of the educational suppliers sector and recognising the outstanding achievements of those who set the standard for excellence in education. Winning With Numbers, a recent partnership with Hachette Learning, has also been shortlisted for the Outstanding Assessment Resource.

It seems like an appropriate time to look at how schools have been using Adaptive Revise with their GCSE students since its inception. We have had some in-depth studies and testimonials from teachers from two schools which illustrate in detail the students’ reactions to the online platform and the things they found useful. Thank you to Saltley Academy and St Aidan’s School for their feedback on Adaptive Revise.

What Saltley Academy found most valuable about Adaptive Revise 

• Personalised learning pathways: The adaptive nature of the platform tailors questions to student ability, which helps differentiate learning and ensures students are working at an appropriate challenge level.
• Data and Analytics: the ability to track progress and identify gaps in knowledge is valuable for targeted intervention and planning revision strategies

What St Aidan’s School found valuable about the Adaptive Revise platform

• Adaptive tailoring: The platform dynamically adjusts content to meet each student’s individual needs, a feature that the teacher indicated he may not be able to replicate manually.
• Dedicated area for feedback: The feedback area was deemed to have clear potential — the teacher could see the value in projecting student answers to lead class discussion.

What St Aidan’s School found valuable about the Adaptive Revise content

• Overall content level and question pitching are considered appropriate for the students at St Aidan’s School.
• The adaptive, spaced retrieval approach is valued: Adam noted that platforms which serve content before testing may only address short-term memory, whereas Adaptive Revise supports longer-term retention when used correctly.
• The variety of question types (gap fill, multiple choice, etc.) is viewed positively by the teacher, even if some students find switching formats confusing.

Supporting Recall and Progress – students’ views

Student feedback from two secondary schools indicates that Adaptive Revise is most clearly valued for its role in supporting recall and helping students identify knowledge gaps, guiding independent improvement.

In student surveys, feedback sessions and in-class observations, students demonstrated a clear understanding of how the platform’s adaptive model supports improvement. Rather than viewing it solely as a testing tool, they described how feedback and adaptive repetition was helping them retain knowledge and refine their answers over time:

It helps me to understand the subject more.

A student survey indicated consistent evidence that the platform is delivering against its core learning purpose, where 72% of students commented that the assigned tasks helped them remember information, and 61% said they helped focus on areas needing practice.
 

It helps me remember the knowledge and check what I know and don’t know.

A key theme across both schools was the connection students made between repeated practice and improved memory. Students described how answering and revisiting questions supported retention over time:

When I get a question wrong it checks again to make sure I get it right.

This suggests that the platform is supporting self-awareness, helping students recognise both strengths and gaps as they revise and improving accuracy through practice.

In terms of user experience, some students felt that fewer steps to log in would be desirable, although the majority of students described the platform as straightforward to use once they are logged in.

They made comments such as, “it is easy to complete and easy to use,” and “easy because it’s right in front of you and it gives you the topic it’s on.”

Students typically position Adaptive Revise as a revision tool rather than a primary teaching resource. It is used to consolidate learning and revisit key content, particularly in preparation for assessment: Adaptive Learn “Helps me revise and go over things.”

Taken together, this feedback points to a consistent student perception of value. While overall engagement varies between students, the learning benefits are clear. Students experience Adaptive Revise as a tool that helps them retain knowledge, understand what they don’t yet know, and improve through structured, repeated practice.

Transcript from Adam Corbridge, St Aidan’s School

Adam Corbridge works at St Aidan’s Church of England High School in Lancashire. He is a Head of Humanities and Head of Geography. In this interview, he talks us through how he trialled Adaptive Revise for GCSE with his students, and how the platform can help to support adaptive learning.

“The thing that I value most about adaptive learning is that it can be really easily personalised to the classes and the students. Choosing individual learning objectives means I can really focus on finding out what the students know, what they understand, what they don’t know, but also how confident or not they are with their answers at the same time. This really helps me to pick up and diagnose some of the misunderstandings and misconceptions. 

I like how, when the students are completing a quiz (on Adaptive Revise), they are asked for their confidence with their answer as well, because that then gives me really helpful feedback. I can see how many times they have had to complete it or how much they have had to redo, and how long it’s taken them to get confident in their answer.

It also helps them with metacognition and helps them to see their strengths and areas for development in their own learning, which hopefully will help them to become better, self-regulated learners moving forwards.

The third thing I found really helpful is the combination of text and audio that the students are able to interact with instead of just them having to read constantly. There are different forms for them to take in to help them think about what they’re learning, and remember and recall it too.

As a teacher using the platform, it was really helpful having the guidance and support of the team who set it up just at the end of an email or the end of a phone, solving any of my issues. The platform itself is very simple to use. There is clear information on what you need to do, to set up an assignment or to assign it to a class, and actually it’s very hard to break it. I think it’s very easy to use and you can’t really make a mistake with it.

I have been using (Adaptive Revise) with two of my year groups, Year 10 and Year 11, and I’ve used it slightly differently with each year group, for my Year 11s who are obviously preparing for the mock exams and their external exams in the summer. We have given them access to whole chunks of the course, for both the exam practice questions and the adaptive revision modules.

Whereas for the Year 10s, as we have been working through each units one by one in lesson, we decided to set them more regular, shorter assignments, to help them review what they have learned in lesson, check their knowledge, check their understanding and their confidence with those before we then do an interview assessment in class.

When we’ve used Adaptive Revise with our students, we have had some mixed feedback. Most of the students found it really straightforward to use. The others found it frustrating, the fact that they were made to re-answer questions. But from my point of view as a teacher, that’s actually really helpful because that shows they haven’t understood it or they’ve not been confident. It then took a little bit of explaining for me that that’s a good thing, and that’s the whole purpose of this, that if they’re not confident, we will keep asking them, we will keep going over it. 

That’s what Adaptive Revise is helping them to do themselves, to increase their confidence and hopefully reduce their chance of making mistakes in the future.”

About Adaptive Revise

Adaptive Revise is the smarter, more effective way for students to study and prepare for their GCSEs exams. Using adaptive technology, it creates personalised revision pathways tailored to each student’s needs. With focused exam practice, opportunities for self-reflection and clear progress tracking, students gain confidence, improve their grades, and save valuable time – while teachers get powerful insights to support learning.

Adaptive Revise is accessed in Hachette Learning Adaptive, a platform which harnesses cutting-edge AI-driven technology from Area9 Lyceum. It personalises the learning journey in real time based on each learner’s performance and confidence – building higher proficiency and ensuring no learner is left behind. Adaptive Revise:

• Accelerates progress with adaptive revision pathways that adjust to each student’s level, pace and confidence.
• Helps students stay focused and retain knowledge with engaging, bite-sized learning modules.
• Easily monitors student progress and identify where individuals need more support.
• Promotes wellbeing with support and practices that help students to manage stress.
• Builds exam confidence when approaching exam questions through structured exam-style questions, model answers, interactive mark schemes and expert tips.
• Keeps students motivated through automated feedback and progress reports.

For more information on Adaptive Revise, please visit the webpage or sign up to be contacted by one of our consultants.