How Consilium Evolve Delivers Personalised Education and Drives Student Achievement with CENTURY

Consilium Evolve is an Alternative Provision (AP) setting that supports students who have experienced disruption in their mainstream education. They have fantastic attendance rates, 86% average attendance (prior to joining, their learners’ average attendance was 18%) and have previously appeared in a One Show feature showcasing their incredible work. Ofsted recently recognised use of the CENTURY platform as evidence of effective curriculum delivery and learner progress. We sat down with Head of School, Karyn Taylor, to hear about how the CENTURY platform is supporting them with their vision of adaptive teaching and learning.

How do you use CENTURY in your setting?
At Consilium Evolve, we use CENTURY in several key ways. During a student’s two-week induction period, they complete half-hour sessions in maths, science, and English to establish baseline knowledge and identify learning gaps, with staff closely observing student interactions. 

In the classroom, we might use CENTURY as a diagnostic tool, at the end or midway through topics to check understanding. Since some of the diagnostic assessments take 15 minutes, they are really easy to insert into a lesson. It serves as a low-stakes method and helps with differentiation, allowing us to set extension work for advanced students or targeted support for those struggling.

Throughout all these uses, CENTURY is not a standalone tool, but always integrated with staff narrative alongside it. 

How does CENTURY support learners who might miss lessons?

We have a tracker to monitor student attendance and then we can use the platform to easily set specific nuggets for students who have missed lessons or to stretch those who have attended all sessions.

What challenges does CENTURY support?

It’s useful as we can have really different levels in a classroom. For example, in a key stage 3 class we can have 2 students in Year 7 who are working at a Year 4 level alongside Year 9 students who could sit their GCSE Foundation exam, so differentiation is a real challenge. CENTURY allows us to cover the same topic in class but make sure students are completing work at a level appropriate to them and the teacher can be supporting face to face. 

Another important way in which we use CENTURY is in home tuition settings which we offer as a temporary bridge for students not yet ready to attend school. 

How do you find CENTURY’s content? 

We carefully align our weekly curriculum plans with CENTURY’s nuggets, ensuring work carried out on the platform complements what is being taught in the classroom. The use of bite-sized nuggets breaks down the learning into manageable chunks. Some students really love the instant feedback and the fact that they can direct their learning using the Recommended Path. The choice of videos and slides allow learners to choose their preferred approach. 

Does CENTURY have an impact on teacher workload?
CENTURY provides a more meaningful way of using time. It’s a much more effective use of time, because instead of you sitting and marking, you’ve got the scores in front of you with which you can do something. You’re just spending your time in a much more bespoke way for the students. It’s a better use of your time, because you can really dig down and get the information that you need.

It’s also useful for our teaching assistants and teachers working outside their specialisms as they don’t need to spend time sourcing materials elsewhere and can use the CENTURY lessons for support.

What are the main benefits of using CENTURY?

The data provided by the platform is useful and really telling. It’s great to be able to see how long students spend on tasks, identify which topics they are struggling with and track student performance.

CENTURY is integral to our multi-faceted approach that helps boost confidence and provides a better understanding of students’ needs. It forms a really integral part of a bigger picture and supports our vision of adaptive teaching and learning.

Do you have a student success story you’d like to share?

A student from last year’s Year 11 cohort attended Evolve full time following a short period with our home tutor. During this time, the student accessed CENTURY frequently between sessions. When the student felt able to access Evolve full time, she still used the CENTURY platform to support her revision during dedicated timetabled slots when lessons for non-core subjects were taking place. During the check-in process, the student reported that she found the familiarity of the platform reassuring and was still managing to access from home too. The student went on to achieve grade 5s for English and Maths and grade 6-7 in Combined Science. She is now studying A Levels in science at Sunderland College.

What are your plans for going forward with CENTURY?

We’re going to continue with our approach to using CENTURY as part of our induction process as well as in-class. We’re also about to start conversations about how to engage parents and carers.

To learn more about how to embed CENTURY into your PRU or AP, click here. Book a demo here.