• Urban Academy 404 pupils (oversubscribed) in Bedford
• Ofsted rating: Requires improvement
• FSM: 31.2%

Review rating:

Average rating across all Education City reviews: 3.9/5

Education City is a really useful, engaging tool that we would highly recommend to support learning in lessons.

How well does it match the curriculum?

Brilliantly: There is more content (eg support / extension activities) than we expected

It’s matched carefully against the national curriculum statements. There are learn screens to teach and revise concepts

How well does it support adaptation for different groups of pupils?

Reasonably: Essentially there’s enough for most pupils but there isn’t enough support.

It would be useful for activities to have levels of challenge that could be selected e.g. beginner, mastery

How well does it engage and motivate pupils?

Brilliantly: Pupils love using and are excited when they know they are going to do so

The activities are easy to use and presented in an engaging way. Activities for older children could do with reflecting their maturity levels more - the use of the cartoon characters is not necessarily as appealing to UKS2.

How well supported is it by any included formative assessments?

Brilliantly: We could (or do) use it for monitoring pupils or classes, for gap analysis or to inform intervention strategies

The assessments clearly show where gaps are and provide tracking data which can be used to plan teaching. It is all automatic so saves so much time.

How well does it support planning?

Well: It’s fairly self-contained and can be used with minimal preparation

You can search by NC statement or concept and match to different groups of children really easily. It analyses results for you so you can see success or areas of need.

How well does it support home use / independent learning?

Brilliantly: We’d have very few reservations about using this extensively to support home learning

It’s a really useful tool for remote learning and we use it extensively for homework.

How would you rate it for value for money compared to similar resources?

Well: It’s worth the money and effort to introduce – more so than many similar resources I’ve seen

Different levels of access, or subject by subject access would be ideal as we tend to use it mostly for maths and science rather than English.

Would you recommend it to a colleague in a similar school to yours? 10/11

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