Stafford Grammar: A 56% increase in 9-7 GCSE Grades with Seneca Premium - Case Study

“Seneca has got great content, it's accessible, it's fresh, it's exciting, and it's introducing features like AI. That's why I like it.”

- Colin Anderson, Stafford Grammar School

Key outcomes

Background

Stafford Grammar School is an independent grammar school in the UK, committed to student-centred learning. With Seneca Premium the school achieved a remarkable increase in attainment: the proportion of 9-7 GCSE grades increased by 56% across one academic year, and the proportion of A* grades at A Level increased by 40%. Colin Anderson, the lead teacher championing Seneca at Stafford and Assistant Headmaster, talked us through the school’s challenges and explained how Seneca Premium has become a key part of their strategy.

The Challenge

Stafford Grammar School faced familiar attainment challenges. Pupils relied on last-minute revision and lacked independent study habits. There was limited insight into pupils’ revision patterns and performance gaps, and teachers were spending substantial manual time on homework. There was also a need for differentiated support for a broad spectrum of learners.

If you would like to learn more about Seneca Premium, please contact Ruth at ruth@seneca.io. There is also a download link for this report at the bottom of the page.

At the beginning of the 2023/24 academic year, the school adopted Seneca Premium for KS4 and KS5. There has since been a marked improvement across key areas of school.

Comparing pre-Seneca and post-Seneca attainment, grades have shot up:

Colin pointed to several key areas of school that Premium has impacted positively.

An area that has seen significant improvement with Seneca Premium is student engagement, especially with homework and revision tasks. Colin explained how Seneca Premium has made it “easier to set regular, flexible homework that suits a wide range of student needs” using tailored content such as Hardest Questions and the 4-5 Booster courses. These Premium-only courses are differentiated to suit varying abilities.

The widespread adoption of Seneca Premium across departments has helped to boost student engagement too. The school's science department uses Seneca extensively - as Colin put it, the department is “consuming Seneca by the bucket load”. Teachers here have been setting an average of 5 assignments per week for the entire 2024/25 academic year so far!

“Pupils are more engaged with homework now. They like the format, and we can finally track who's actually revising.”

- Colin, Stafford Grammar School

Keeping learning fun and engaging for pupils can also be challenging. Seneca’s interactive questions, images, and audio - rooted in the principles of dual-coding - have been helping to keep pupils engaged. In Colin’s words, “It’s a nice treat to do Seneca because it’s not a workbook”.

Outside of assigned work pupils with Seneca Premium can use it as much as they’d like. They have full access to the platform’s 26 subjects and the majority of Premium features like the efficient Wrong Answers and Smart Learning modes. Smart Learning is designed to help pupils beat the forgetting curve, while Wrong Answers mode allows them to go over previous incorrect answers. Colin explained how these personalised revision paths have “helped pupils to revisit challenging topics”.

“We've now got a tool where pupils feel totally comfortable to go and undertake independent learning. Seneca empowers pupils to take ownership of their learning.”

By encouraging pupils to complete tasks through Seneca prior to lessons, A-level pupils arrive at class better prepared. This flipped approach has led to confident class discussions and improved exam prep.

“It means they come to the class empowered and it’s raising confidence levels in lessons. It’s made a big difference.”

Setting tasks is only half the story. Colin emphasised that Premium reporting features have led to “effective tracking of revision habits and progress”. It can be difficult to identify and support struggling pupils manually, but the enhanced reporting of Seneca Premium allows teachers to download detailed reports about individual usage. These reports contain breakdowns about usage on an individual level as well as aggregations by target groups and classes. Colin and his team use the analytics to identify underperforming pupils early and adjust support strategies accordingly.

“Seneca provides insights into pupils who may be underperforming relative to their potential, particularly in topic areas. It enables early interventions that will hopefully maintain high achievement levels.”

Seneca Premium’s Knowledge Gaps is a quick-and-easy way to help underperforming pupils by setting tailored assignments aimed at their weaker areas. With Knowledge Gaps, this task can be done in minutes.

Colin also uses Seneca to aid intervention sessions and lift struggling pupils. The science department, for example, set targeted revision for Year 11 pupils who had disengaged with GCSEs - not to test, but to reinforce learning.

“Pupils who are underperforming relative to potential, I'll set them work on Seneca because I can see what they're doing. We have a small number of students who are on intervention, who have a reduced GCSE timetable. The science department is using Seneca to bolster those intervention sessions, they use it as an effective learning aid.”

Through interventions and revision, Colin noticed the underperforming pupils using Seneca are showing marked improvement.

“I’ve looked at the alignment between those who are using it for revision and those who are performing well on tests. I've noticed that we're starting to raise the achievement at the bottom end of the range with the pupils who are using Seneca - it’s starting to pull them along and we're making progress.”

Like most schools, managing teacher time and workload is an ongoing task. Certain features of Seneca have helped to alleviate this problem. Automated feedback, AI-powered marking, and structured revision tasks have freed up valuable teacher time. This shift has enabled teachers to deliver more targeted, high-quality support.

“Seneca allows teachers to focus on targeted, meaningful support for pupils. We get to them sooner.”

Feedback is a key part of exam prep to ensure pupils stand the best chance on the big day. Stafford Grammar’s Comment-Progress-Response (CPR) process is used by staff to provide guidance. Providing this individualised feedback started to eat into the time that teachers would use for other critical exam prep tasks, like setting exam questions. The school decided to start setting exam questions on Seneca - taking advantage of the fact that the majority are auto-marked.

“We were finding that the CPR process occasionally took time away from the task of setting examination questions. So we filled that gap with Seneca because it saves time by doing a lot of the marking, so a lot of the heavy lifting. Seneca allows us to provide additional individualised feedback in a more consistent way.”

Rather than cramming, pupils now engage in frequent revision. This has been key to the improvement seen in GCSE results. This practice is taking root across Science and expanding into other subjects like Psychology.

“It promotes regular, low-stakes revision. Instead of telling pupils “you’ve got a test on Monday, revise”, now assignments are set for revision. Monitoring this has always been impossible before - we now have data! This has improved student engagement with these tasks. I can make sure they’re doing the revision tasks.”

Following the success of Seneca premium with KS4 & 5 in 2023/24, Stafford Grammar upgraded to Premium for the full school. The school is now exploring how Seneca Premium can be used to stretch high achievers with advanced exam questions and expand support to non-exam year groups.

“It’s not just a revision tool - it’s part of our learning culture now.”

Colin also emphasised how the regular product updates help to keep staff logging on - the AI features in particular.

“Seneca is accessible and it's introducing stuff like AI as it comes along. It's fresh, it's exciting, it's adding new features. That's why I like it.”

He also specified how the ease that features like Magic Quizzes provide to teachers has been especially helpful at inducting some less-technologically-inclined teachers into the platform.

“I like Magic Quizzes! I showed them to staff during a recent CPD session. It was all sparkly and exciting and it's got them using Seneca more now. One teacher didn’t realise she could use her own content to make her own quiz, so that was lovely. It's about engaging the people who are reticent about technology. When they see the benefits, how quickly they can do things, it's turned opinions around and now that teacher uses them all the time.”

With Seneca Premium, Stafford Grammar School has unlocked a smarter way to revise, teach, and support. Through a combination of engaging content, insightful data, and reduced admin load, the platform has helped elevate outcomes and has kept staff and pupils empowered and motivated.

Many thanks to Colin for speaking to us!

If you would like to learn more about Seneca Premium, please contact Ruth at ruth@seneca.io. You can also get a quote by clicking here.

Use these links to download the full report or a 1-page summary to share with staff: