10 May 2025
In the last update we introduced some additional question filters for students when using Quiz and Advance. These enabled a student to exclude mastered questions or only include questions they have answered incorrectly in the past in Quiz. This change made it easier for the students to correct mistakes and master questions. In addition, the new difficulty filters in Advance enabled students to select easy, medium and hard questions. While these filters have been useful for students, especially those who are not joined to a class, we know some teachers want students to always be in “Smart Mode”. This is where Smart Revise chooses the next question for the student based on its spaced learning and retrieval strategy algorithms. This update puts control back in the teacher’s hands enabling them to have three levels of control for their classes in each mode: off, Smart mode only and Question filters. These settings can be changed in the class configuration.
When a mode is off students cannot access it. Smart Mode only is a good default in the first year of a course. Question filters allows students to filter questions without affecting the topic filters. This is a useful setting in the second year of a course. It is worth mentioning that the topic filters also give different control to students too. Teacher controlled means that students are locked into full Smart mode. Teacher guided means students can change the topics but only within those selected by the teacher. Student controlled gives students full access to change their topics. In both teacher guided and student controlled students can select individual pie charts from their summary report to only revise one topic.
Change to Terms deck builder
The Terms deck builder has been changed so it matches the new question filter options for Quiz and Advance. Nothing has really changed here but it brings some consistency to the student experience across Quiz, Terms and Advance.
Change to the flight path end date
Originally, we planned the flight path to end two weeks before the first exam because we wanted students to be “exam ready” by this point. However, it probably shouldn’t surprise us that students are working hard on Quiz, Terms and Advance just days before their exam so we have extended the flight path end date to match the date of the last exam instead. Students can now see the progress they are making right up to the last moment!
Update to command words for Quiz questions in a Task
Until now Quiz questions set in a Task would always say, “Select the correct answer” at the end of the question. However, this does not always match the command word in the specification. Some courses use “Identify” instead of “Select”. This is a minor change that students probably won’t notice but multiple-choice Quiz questions now also match the published command word for the relevant specification.
Accessibility updates
Some users reported that the colour blind Tritanopia theme was not using the best colour palette. This has now been modified and checked with the WhoCanUse website. Please continue to give us your feedback.
We are currently reviewing all questions for the 2028 GCSE courses and 2027 A level courses to replace images of data with tables instead.
OCR A level H046-H446 and AQA GCSE 8525 courses
The new OCR A level 2027 course will be one combined course for H046 (AS level) and H446 (full A level) with students able to use just one course and progress from one to the other by unlocking topics. The number of sub-topics has also been increased significantly.
On Monday 31 March 2025, the Department for Education (DfE) announced updates to the Computer Science subject content. Examination boards have the choice to adopt the suggested changes to their current specifications.
GCSE Computer Science proposed subject content: government consultation response
Although there are no changes to OCR GCSE J277 or Pearson Edexcel 1CP2, changes are coming to the AQA GCSE 8525 specification for teaching from September 2025 and exams from 2027 onwards.
GCSE Computer Science: specification changes for exams in 2027
We’ve been working very closely with the team at AQA and can reassure you that Smart Revise has been fully updated. However, if you are currently using the AQA GCSE 2027 course in Smart Revise we need to migrate you to this new course. We will be in touch directly once the new course has been released.
