News

Follow the development of Smart Revise

May 2025 update

Question filtering control for teachers

In the last update we introduced some additional question filters for students when using Quiz and Advance. These enabled a student to exclude mastered questions or only include questions they have answered incorrectly in the past in Quiz. This change made it easier for the students to correct mistakes and master questions. In addition, the new difficulty filters in Advance enabled students to select easy, medium and hard questions.

While these filters have been useful for students, especially those who are not joined to a class, we know some teachers want students to always be in "Smart Mode". This is where Smart Revise chooses the next question for the student based on its spaced learning and retrieval strategy algorithms. This update puts control back in the teacher's hands enabling them to have three levels of control for their classes in each mode: off, Smart mode only and Question filters.

These settings can be changed in the class configuration.

Control modes

When a mode is off students cannot access it. Smart Mode only is a good default in the first year of a course. Question filters allows students to filter questions without affecting the topic filters. This is a useful setting in the second year of a course.

It is worth mentioning that the topic filters also give different control to students too. Teacher controlled means that students are locked into full Smart mode. Teacher guided means students can change the topics but only within those selected by the teacher. Student controlled gives students full access to change their topics. In both teacher guided and student controlled students can select individual pie charts from their summary report to only revise one topic.

Control topics

Change to Terms deck builder

The Terms deck builder has been changed so it matches the new question filter options for Quiz and Advance. Nothing has really changed here but it brings some consistency to the student experience across Quiz, Terms and Advance.

Change to the flight path end date

Originally, we planned the flight path to end two weeks before the first exam because we wanted students to be "exam ready" by this point. However, it probably shouldn't surprise us that students are working hard on Quiz, Terms and Advance just days before their exam so we have extended the flight path end date to match the date of the last exam instead. Students can now see the progress they are making right up to the last moment!

Update to command words for Quiz questions in a Task

Until now Quiz questions set in a Task would always say, "Select the correct answer" at the end of the question. However, this does not always match the command word in the specification. Some courses use "Identify" instead of "Select". This is a minor change that students probably won't notice but multiple-choice Quiz questions now also match the published command word for the relevant specification.

Accessibility updates

Some users reported that the colour blind Tritanopia theme was not using the best colour palette. This has now been modified and checked with the WhoCanUse website. Please continue to give us your feedback.

We are currently reviewing all questions for the 2028 GCSE courses and 2027 A level courses to replace images of data with tables instead.

OCR A level H046-H446 and AQA GCSE 8525 courses

The new OCR A level 2027 course will be one combined course for H046 (AS level) and H446 (full A level) with students able to use just one course and progress from one to the other by unlocking topics. The number of sub-topics has also been increased significantly.

On Monday 31 March 2025, the Department for Education (DfE) announced updates to the Computer Science subject content. Examination boards have the choice to adopt the suggested changes to their current specifications.

GCSE Computer Science proposed subject content: government consultation response

Although there are no changes to OCR GCSE J277 or Pearson Edexcel 1CP2, changes are coming to the AQA GCSE 8525 specification for teaching from September 2025 and exams from 2027 onwards.

GCSE Computer Science: specification changes for exams in 2027

We've been working very closely with the team at AQA and can reassure you that Smart Revise has been fully updated. However, if you are currently using the AQA GCSE 2027 course in Smart Revise we need to migrate you to this new course. We will be in touch directly once the new course has been released.

Feature requests

See the progress of your ideas.

Kanban

Archives

Student with question cards in different piles.

Huge quality of life update for both students and teachers

Students can now filter questions in Quiz and Advance and teachers can add and delete questions when setting a task.
Improvements to task marking

Improvements to task marking

Automatically release marks to students after AI marking plus an improved teacher marking interface too.
Flight path

What does the data on a student flight path mean?

Flight paths show progress over time, but how is this calculated?
Topic filters

What’s the difference between the topic filters?

Use the different topic filters at each stage of the course.
Recap the entire course to date with Quiz.

Why using Quiz is better than Tasks for recall activities

With Tasks all students get the same questions, but with Quiz the questions are automatically personalised for each student.
Book cover: The Revision Revolution by Helen Howell and Ross Morrison McGill.

Why you should start every computer science lesson in years 10 to 13 with Smart Revise Quiz

Starting every lesson with a recall activity has a lasting impact over time.
Student practicing exams

AQA A level content update

Another huge update for the AQA A level Computer Science course includes a bumper load of new, original Advance questions.
Teacher working on laptop

Task management update

Managing Tasks is now much easier with a redesigned interface to increase data visibility.
Case studies

New case studies for AQA & OCR Business

11 new case studies have been added to the OCR GCSE (J204) and AQA GCSE (8132) Business courses.
Student piloting an aeroplane

New feature: student flight path

With the introduction of flight paths, students and teachers can now see progress over time.

Improved Edexcel 1CP2 Computer Science course

For September 2024, every Quiz question and Term definition has been reviewed and replaced or reworded to ensure a tighter match to the course specification.
Teach Co Awards 2024 logo

Shortlisted in the Teach Secondary Awards 2024

We are proud to announce that Smart Revise has been shortlisted for the third year in a row for a teaching award.
Teacher photocopying sheets

Copy a task between year groups

Tasks can now be copied across year groups within the same course family.
Teenager sat on bed with an iPad.

June 2024 update

A new Terms analytics report and other changes.
Student surrounded by books

AQA A/AS level Computer Science update

The new 2026 AQA (7517) course has been broken down from 13 topics into 51 sub-topics, but AS level has been discontinued.
Student with a tablet computer looking at a pie chart.

Topic targeting

Students can now focus on one topic at a time more easily using links in their revision report.
A robot looking at blocks that make a bar chart.

Data from Tasks is now included in Quiz, Terms & Advance

Tasks that have marks released to students will now affect Quiz, Terms, Advance and Analytics too.

Huge improvement to AI marking

The large language model has been upgraded to improve the range and accuracy of AI marking.

Content update for GCSE Computer Science courses

New programming questions have been added matching the format of real exams.

2023 release notes

All the features released in 2023.

2022 release notes

All the features released in 2022.

2021 release notes

All the features released in 2021.