Secondary News

International Day for Women in Science

It was great to see so many of our students celebrating the truly significant contributions made by women in Science. Many of our female students and staff dressed up as their favourite scientist, and it was wonderful to see such creativity and celebration. The aim of the day is to inspire young women to consider careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and to show them that they can achieve anything they set their minds to, regardless of gender. With role models such as Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin, and Fatima al-Fihriya it's clear that women have been making significant advancements in the field of science for centuries. We are proud to encourage our own students to follow in their footsteps!

Revision Tip - Studying With Music

Many students do their homework and revision whilst listening to music Many of them will insist that listening to their favourite songs helps them study.

But does music actually increase or hinder learning? And does it matter what type of music you listen to whilst revising? To answer these questions, researchers Nick Perham and Harriet Cure from the Applied Psychology department of Cardiff Metropolitan University recently ran a study. They assigned students of a range of ages to one of four groups and their results were extremely interesting:

Students who revised in quiet environments performed over 60% better in an exam than their peers who revised listening to music that had lyrics.

It made no difference if students revised whilst listening to different types of music. Both led to a reduction in their subsequent test performance.

Students who revised in silence rated their environment as less distracting, and accurately predicted that this would lead to better performances in subsequent tests

Whilst listening to music before a task can make someone feel better, listening to it whilst trying to learn something new tends not to help. This is because music, especially with lyrics, can take up processing space. This conflicts with the material you are trying to learn, effectively creating a traffic jam in our memory, as there is less space to process what you are revising We know how hard our students are working at home but it is just as important that they are working in the most efficient way!