The West London Free School took part in Elemental's beta testing trial, with 35 Y11's and 4 Y13's using the platform for homework and revision in the months leading up to their exams in summer 2025. Elemental's impact played out in three key ways:
- Improving the learning of aural concepts
- Identifying class/student strengths and weaknesses
- Holding students accountable during study leave
1. Improving the learning of aural concepts
Music GCSE and A-level are replete with aural concepts that can only be musically understood through repeatedly hearing examples. If a student does not already know what an anacrusis is then a verbal explanation might briefly be helpful but this explanation is only given meaning by hearing a number of anacruses and then checking understanding by listening for the presence or absence of anacrusis in a range of melodies.
Elemental's examples enabled the setting of homework and revision based entirely in sound, just as the students encounter in the real exams.
2. Identifying class/student strengths and weaknesses
For the four A level students Elemental's radar diagrams gave daily feedback in the two weeks before the exam on the areas that the students had nailed and the areas that required further listening. This level of regular, granular feedback had never been possible before and so communications were possible along the lines of 'excellent that you are reliably hearing when a melody ends on the tonic but you are less reliable when it ends on the supertonic or dominant so please do a quiz on just those two.'
For the 35 GCSE students, with their much greater range and frequency of exams in May, Elemental gave broader information on where efforts were needed, such as using Elemental's Revision to ensure that the knowledge needed to complete Rhythms of the World questions was at their fingertips. This particular area was Quiz 10 and Elemental showed that the students were making it to Quiz 5 before getting distracted, invaluable information in advance of half-term revision sessions.
3. Holding the students to account during study leave
With all the pressures of many exams student efforts dropped dramatically at the start of study leave. This year, however, we were able to give encouragement based on the real data of how much revision was being done every day. After a lull of two weeks some judicious emailing and reminders with realistic targets resulted in consistent small efforts being made four weeks before the exam, successfully pushing against the tendency for everything to be left to the last minute. We also used Elemental as a revision activity for pupils and would catch them on the way out of previous exams so they could do 10-15 minutes of work on Elemental. After all this the last minute uptick was still huge but from a higher base than would otherwise have been the case.
It's one of the main reasons I got an A, and everyone else should have access to it, because it's a life saver and by far the most helpful tool I've ever come across in Music exam prep.
— Alexis, Year 13 Student, West London Free School
One of the great things about using Elemental is the amount of data available to support instruction. We have always tracked how pupils were performing across the year in our various practice exams in class (both formal and informal), but with Elemental we have much more to help us target our teaching. Throughout the year I am able to see how long each pupil spends on Elemental, see their success rate, and then see how the amount of time spent on Elemental directly affects paper results. I set homework for all pupils using the Homework Scheduling tool, but I can also say specifically to each student what they need to focus on to raise their marks.
We use the OCR Exam Board which allows us to see how our pupils performed on each question compared to the national average. This year, across the board, our pupils did better than the national average. We are lucky to work in a music specialist school which means our pupils are very capable, but comparing our results from previous years clearly demonstrates that the addition of Elemental has had a positive effect on our results.
Notational has been a huge benefit for my A Level teaching. I teach the aural portion of the course and in the past have utilised some of my previous university aural materials alongside practice papers. Notational's classwork is broken up into 5 different levels and the types of questions are consistent across the sets, which means my pupils have an ample amount of practice.
Notational breaks down the skills into 6 questions that build to completing a full dictation task similar to what will be on the paper. My students have benefited from the sheer number of practice tasks that we complete across the term and I've been able to see their specific areas of weakness so I can provide them with extra practice.
Rachel-Anne Rose
Deputy Director of Music, West London Free School
Written by Ed Watkins and Rachel-Anne Rose
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