A lot of additional functionality has been introduced over the last few months (hopefully you have noticed some helpful improvements). Before covering these, I need to start with some details regarding necessary GDPR actions.

GDPR

During March 2020 we will delete personal data held in our archive. As this should contain students and teachers that are no longer subscribed this should not present any issues for schools.

Please make contact to advise any reason why we should not delete your School’s archive.

Snapshot Booklets - School Discounts

We have upgraded the tech support for these. This delivers a vastly improved student experience.

1. Students with course access can enjoy the support of the Booklet and call up video support via their phone but can also directly link into courses via the screen options on their phone. Students can buy direct for £9.99 a book or enjoy a heavy discount if a bulk school order is made (30 books min). £4.99 a book or £6.99 a book for Combined Science and £9.99 for a set of 3 Single Science books.
2. Please note that the new technology does not support legacy booklets. These can be identified as they do not have any Zap instructions on the front page. New booklets will be required.
3. Overall our expectation is that these books will have significant impacts on independent learning by integrating digital and print via mobile devices.
4. Although we did not have time to produce booklets for Edexcel GCSE or Edexcel iGCSE. We will produce these for the next school year.

 Revision Plans

 Last year we produced a very simple plan for the Economics courses. This year we have invested a lot more time in this and have produced specific 10-week plans. We will also extend this to other subjects.

 The aim of these plans is to:

1. Help students conduct a syllabus knowledge audit to identify and then fill gaps prior to exams.
2. Chunk up the challenge students face, so that they are guided through the exam build up in a way that helps them to make sure they spread their effort and do not run out of time.

These are currently available for the A-Level courses and will be available for GCSE courses in time for the start of the 10 weeks build up on 6^th April. Schools purchasing snapshot booklets for their school will be offered the opportunity of course access for this 10-week period.

The plan is built around the end of section/module assessments. We have recently added these for Maths and will add similar assessments during March in time for the start date of the revision plans.

There will be an opportunity to sign up for a weekly email prior to the start of the period.

 New Student Gradebook

 A dispiriting aspect of the last few months has been to discover that quite a few schools have not noticed the Student Gradebook changes we made over Xmas. The changes include:

1. An incredible control panel that identifies and fills learning gaps.
2. Access to specific and concise question feedback means that students have the benefit of content shaped in the context of an actual question. This supports higher level skills development and avoids the dispiriting process of revisiting the same generalised explanations.

End of Section Assessments and Student Grade-books

Although there is plenty of grumbling about extra work, our new set up means that additional work is rewarded. This image highlights the outcomes of one of the first attempts at our foundation level End of Section Assessments. Find gaps and then fill them. Simple!

Budgeting for next year

We have gradually revised pricing over the last 12 months. All renewal quotation will be priced on this basis – see table below. This includes schools that started on a higher level prior to the start of this year. We will supply school specific quotations over the next few weeks.

Best wishes

Peter Jordan

EzyEducation Ltd

Following our first Augmented Reality offer we are delighted to launch a new and much improved range of snapshot booklets supported by our new Augmented Reality partner ZapWorks.  

The App is free and simple to set up and generates AR experiences rapidly. It provides access to a video play or download option, PDF material and links to more detailed video content or formative assessment activities within our courses. All achieved without letting go of your device.

Over the last 12 months, your students have been very busy. Over 3.3m questions answered.

As a result of this activity, your students will now reap the rewards of all this work with a QLA empowered gradebook. 

The new gradebook is planned for release on Monday 23rd December 2019.

When students next login after this release they will have access to a new gradebook. This provides:

1. Activity time and assessment count/outcome data - see "Activity Summary".
2. Access to their personal line held in teacher grade books - See "Course Summary"
3. Question level analysis with access to feedback/explanations for every question attempted by clicking on question cells - see "Learning Gaps"
4. The gradebook includes filters to help students improve focus on specific parts of the course.
5. Report download options.

Some additional benefits:

1. Immediate review of assessments after attempts.
2. Rapid navigation between questions and feedback to accelerate and personalise revision.
3. Works on tablets and handheld devices.

Although this has been thoroughly tested please do let us know if you run into any issues over the Xmas holidays at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Finally, we would like to thank all our schools and their students for their support this year. Our business relies on your support and we hope to continue to meet the needs of schools in 2020 with high quality, time-saving and data-driven learning system that takes the heat off teachers and helps them to help their students achieve more.

Happy Xmas and best wishes for 2020

EzyEducation Team. 

Today some changes to the Assignment Hub were released. These apply to student users:

• Current Assignments (previously assignments set)- any assignment that has not been completed will be accessed under this heading. There will be an option to start or resume
• Other Assignments  - all completed assignments will appear under this heading. There will be an option to retake assessments (24-hour rule applies) or replay previous video assignments.
• Colour coding relating to due/overdue has been removed.

 A more significant change will be a new student gradebook. This is scheduled for release on 21/12/19 and will provide a single Html page with details of

• Total time on the system and total assessments and average outcome with subject splits.
• Access to data on video and assessment records with options to filter to narrow the focus on specific parts of the course and generate pdf reports accordingly
• Access to learning maps for EVERY assessment completed providing individual question outcomes and immediate access to question feedback. This is a big step forward and could transform exam preparations, but only for those students who work hard and complete assessments. This opportunity will depend entirely on the number of assessments completed.

 This will enter the final test phase soon thanks to the help of some of our student users. Watch out for updates. 

This week's edition of the Weekly 5 recaps some important business stories of the past week. If you are an A-Level Economics student there is an interesting article about UK productivity, as well as a story on global tax systems and standards.

The main stories, as chosen by our team this week:

• Pizza Express - We take a look at the recent warning signs in the latest financial accounts of the restaurant chain.
• UK Productivity - We take a look at the most recent data surrounding the UK economy on the economy's productivity performance.
• MNC Tech Firms - We take a look at the proposals from the OECD on how to reinvent the global tax system to help recover lost tax revenue from MNC activity.
• Lidl - We report on the leaked news that the supermarket chain Lidl is to launch a new ecommerce platform to sell their products over.
• Dyson - We report on the scrapped electric car project of Dyson and discuss some of the reasons for this. 

This week's edition of the Weekly 5 recaps some important economics stories of the past week. If you are an A-Level Business student these topics will help prepare you for the Global Business section of the course.

The main stories, as chosen by our team this week:

• Japan - We take a look at the recent increase in Japan's sales tax in the context of an economy that has battled deflation over the past decade.
• Tesco - After the announcement that the Tesco CEO will stand down at the end of the year, we assess how effective he has been in turning around the company's fortunes.
• US-EU Trade War - We take look at the recent trade dispute between the United States and the European Union (EU).
• National Living Wage Pledge - We report on the planned policy approach from the Conservative Party in relation to boosting the National Living Wage to £10.50/hr.
• Saudi Arabia Tourism - We take a look at a recent policy initiative from the Kingdom to increase the number of tourists  to the country each year.

Alongside these stories you will also discover some additional features such as:

• UK Economy at a Glance - Summarises the state of some of the UK economy's most important performance metrics.
• Economy of the Week - A look at the story of how China re-invented its economy to become the second largest economy in the world.
• Chart of the Week - We look at a chart that reports on the dramatic weekly decline in the value of the FTSE 100 Index.
• Concept of the Week - We discuss the key knowledge requirements of trade tariffs in light of the story of the trade dispute between the United States and the European Union. 
• Challenge Zone - Five questions that challenge readers to use the information and data in the newsletter to practice technique. 

Click here to access the full PDF version

Stay tuned for further editions of the Weekly 5 released weekly during term time!

The Weekly 5 is back with a fresh new look! After three years of producing the Weekly 5, the team at EzyEconomics and EzyBusiness have combined their efforts to produce a weekly newsletter that includes features designed to recap the key talking points of the week, help students improve exam technique and their data analysis skills, and satisfy the appetite of those students who are passionate about the subject.

The upgrade has seen a host of new additional features built into the discussion about the current issues in real world business and economies. These features include the discussion of the key figures behind an economic theory or business idea, analysing the charts and big numbers that are making the headlines and a series of quantitative and written based questions which build upon the reports in the newsletter.

The editions for business and economics will run in alternative weeks during term time. This week's edition focuses primarily on business stories, but there is plenty of scope for crossover for economics students.

We hope that you had an enjoyable and sun-soaked summer break! Here at EzyEconomics the team have been busy putting together a summary of the latest economics news for you to recap the main stories that have unfolded over the summer. This is a gentle recap document of a broad selection of stories related to many of the main topics and concepts that you will come across throughout your studies of A-Level Economics. For each of the stories featured in the recap document, we have placed an external link taking you to a more detailed report written on this story for further reading if you wish to do so.

We have introduced a number of improvements to the Assignment Hub.

Please see below for details and instructions:

1. Assignments can be set for single classes, multiple classes or for individual or small groups of students.
2. Click on "class" and select however many classes you wish to select for, select a due date, close, set.
3. Click on "student" and select the student or students you wish to select work for and complete as above. The "student" filed will show all students. If you wish to reduce this number simply select class first before then selecting from the students in view.
4. The assignment pages now show which teacher set the work and have a sort option available to rearrange the order of assignments by the due date.
5. Any teacher can now set work for any class.
6. The grade book report can now be accessed directly from the Learning Zone home page i.e. report icon visible. This applies to work set for single students and means there would be a filtered grade book for one student or for all the students the work was set for.
7. Students will now have access to a retake button in the completed assignments section.
8. Assignments are now attached to students (previously classes) so that assignments from all previous classes remain visible when students change class.
9. School reps will now appear in the teacher tab. If you select and the edit you will see that they can now be specifically added to classes.
10. The hub now shows who set work. However, this has not been tracked historically and will not show on legacy assignments. You will see -//- in the column.
11. There is a sort arrow above the due dates so that assignments can be re-ordered by the due date.
12. Overdue assignments are now highlighted in student pages with indigo (previously red).

We are currently in the process of giving the courses a "face-lift" to improve the student and teacher interface and user experience when navigating through the course home page. The main changes for the Econ. courses are detailed here. Similar changes will be implemented Science and Maths through the rest of the summer.

Course Description:

This week's Weekly 5 covers stories ranging from a political perspective to a sporting one! If anyone is unfamiliar with this regular feature it aims to provide you with a short summary of some of the most significant and interesting stories of the week across and within economies around the world. This helps keep you up to date with the news, whilst at the same time provide you with examples of economic theories and policies in action in the real world.

The Weekly 5 returns for its last edition before the May Half-Term! If anyone is unfamiliar with this regular feature it aims to provide you with a short summary of some of the most significant and interesting stories of the week across and within economies around the world. This helps keep you up to date with the news, whilst at the same time provide you with examples of economic theories and policies in action in the real world.

The Weekly 5 is back with a whole host of stories from the economics world! If anyone is unfamiliar with this regular feature it aims to provide you with a short summary of some of the most significant and interesting stories of the week across and within economies around the world. This helps keep you up to date with the news, whilst at the same time provide you with examples of economic theories and policies in action in the real world.

The Weekly 5 is back with stories from Scotland to Iran! If anyone is unfamiliar with this regular feature it aims to provide you with a short summary of some of the most significant and interesting stories of the week across and within economies around the world. This helps keep you up to date with the news, whilst at the same time provide you with examples of economic theories and policies in action in the real world.

The Weekly 5 returns after the Easter Break and what an edition we have in store for you this week! If anyone is unfamiliar with this regular feature it aims to provide you with a short summary of some of the most significant and interesting stories of the week across and within economies around the world. This helps keep you up to date with the news, whilst at the same time provide you with examples of economic theories and policies in action in the real world.

To support you in developing your evaluation exam technique, the team at EzyEconomics have been busy putting together an Evaluation Pack to help give your grades one final boost ahead of the summer's examinations. This pack provides you with some general tips to develop good exam technique, as well as evaluating 40 different economics topics. This guide is relevant for any student sitting the AQA, Edexcel or OCR exams in the summer. 

Structure your revision effectively!

As exams are fast approaching, we have updated our exam plans for A Level economics. This is based on the end of module assessments within the course. The benefits of this are:

It's the last Friday before the Easter holidays so what better way to round off the spring term by taking a look at the Weekly 5. If anyone is unfamiliar with this regular feature it aims to provide you with a short summary of some of the most significant and interesting stories of the week across and within economies around the world. This helps keep you up to date with the news, whilst at the same time provide you with examples of economic theories and policies in action in the real world.

It's Friday, which means the Weekly 5 is back in another action packed edition! If anyone is unfamiliar with this regular feature it aims to provide you with a short summary of some of the most significant and interesting stories of the week across and within economies around the world. This helps keep you up to date with the news, whilst at the same time provide you with examples of economic theories and policies in action in the real world.