Happy Friday!

Here it is, friends, glistening with possibility. The final week of term, the beginning of something wonderful. The sun-filled, fun-packed summer holidays beckoning…

OK. Flashback/strange wobbly screen-effect…. we started this year - year 6 of the newsletter in case you haven’t been counting - with issue 161, and ran all the way through to 193, so that’s 33 issues. 33. A lot of material to process when you’re a busy teacher, so this week, we’ll change gears a little, and re-cap five of the most interesting pieces we shared. (Interesting to us, but also interesting to you, if click-throughs, feedback and conversations with subscribers are a useful reflection of what’s been of use.)

And if we put these five pieces all together, we’ve effectively got a mini-curriculum for next year’s Quick Tutorial Reads. Bargain!

Speaking of reading - and before we begin our time-machine tour of the last year - check this article out! In its usual annual survey of reading, the National Literacy Trust finds a small increase in children reading for pleasure. YES!!

Children and young people's reading in 2026 | National Literacy Trust

This reports outlines findings from our 2026 Annual Literacy Survey, when we saw a marginal increase in reading enjoyment and frequency.

National Literacy Trust

Maybe you’ve played a part in that small but significant reversal of the tide. 👏 One to fill the heart with hope, folks.

(Before we start: a lot of good writing on education is appearing on Substack. Depending upon your cookies, you may have to google the article title and access it that way, or ‘claim your free post’ in order to re-read some of the articles below. Well worth it though.)

OK, what five things caught most eyes this year? We’ll go chronologically.

1. Back in the Autumn, we shared Adam Mastroianni’s wonderful essay about academic self-sabotage, and made a family-friendly edited version for you too. Lovely feedback about this one. Here’s the piece:

Use this magic bullet to shoot yourself in the foot

OR: Borg vibes

Adam Mastroianni

…and here’s your swear-free shortened QTR:

Grab a Sponge and Start Washing.docx

Grab a Sponge and Start Washing Extracted from Adam Mastroianni’s essay ‘Use this magic bullet to shoot yourself in the foot’ Sometimes, life puts us in lose-lose situations, where it’s embarrassing to try and fail, but it’s also embarrassing not to try at all. It sucks to study for a math exam ...

Google Docs

2. Staying in the Autumn, we had some really good viewing figures for writer Naomi Alderman’s piece about working in a world of AI. (‘Seven things to tell your kids when they ask what the point of studying is’.) Alderman makes a persuasive case for the kinds of characteristics and qualities that can’t be replaced. Many of you loved this one - we did too:

preparing for the working world in the age of AI

or: seven things to tell your kids when they ask what they should study now, or what the point of studying is

Naomi Alderman

You could pair it with this AI quiz, which lots of you liked as well!

Can you predict what AI will do?

quiz.wholesum.tech/?utm_source=vespa.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=friday-mindset-182&_bhlid=878a7c786852b6b05b551e63ba522c4af830f11a

3. Neuroscientist Doctor Dominic Ng’s piece on beating resistance and getting things done went down well. Such clear, simple and practical advice. Here it is again:

How to Trick Your Brain into Doing Difficult Things

A Neuroscientist’s 7 Proven Ways to Get Yourself to Do What Matters

Dr. Dominic Ng

4. Canadian Teacher Andrew Cantarutti wrote two well-researched, thoughtful pieces about the purpose of schools in building attention. Lots of click-throughs when we shared these in the new year, though this pair aren’t necessarily posts of for students to read… maybe better for staff. Check them out here:

Why Attention Must Become Curriculum

Making Schools Sanctuaries of Focus in an Age of Distraction

Andrew Cantarutti

And here:

How Attention Becomes Curriculum

Introducing a Pedagogy of Cultivated Attention

Andrew Cantarutti

5. And in the Spring, Psychologist Rob Lefort’s piece on deliberately seeking discomfort in order to grow was a hit as well. Loads of you seemed to enjoy this one. We certainly did. Here’s your pdf version again, with some light editing:

Rob Lefort on the importance of discomfort.pdf

Google Docs

Put these together and you’ve got some lovely stuff to remind yourself of, and get stuck into. Plus some really useful reads for next year’s students. Done! Phew. Time to take a break.

Blimey, six years of this newsletter. It’s old enough to start high school in September 😂 OK, that’s enough. 2025-26 is in the bag. It’s surely Solero-and-a-beach-towel time, right?

All the best to you and yours. See you on the other side,

Martin, Steve and Tony

p.s. Subscribers, we’ll send you another two issues over the summer - early August time, it’ll be - so look out for those!

Happy Friday!

We do believe this is our penultimate newsletter of the academic year. Blimey, that caught us on the hop - thought we had a few more to go, had our eyes on #200 and forgot we wrap up on July 10th, since no-one wants anything but sunshine and fine wine on the last day of term.

(Subscribers - you’ll have two more newsletters over the summer, so keep an eye out for them!)

Next week we’ll do our usual round-up of the year, sharing some of the articles, ideas or activities folks seemed to like. In the meantime though, we’ve got some interesting stuff for you, so let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

We’ve been slow picking up on this, but it finally found its way to us a few weeks ago, when a reader emailed it in. (Thanks Ollie!)

It speaks to a real issue we’re thinking about at the moment - we shared an article adjacent to this topic last week - how to engage students who are isolated; how to get them off their phones and out into the world. Get them touching grass, man*. Clearly, there’s a way to go with a proportion of our young people if this week’s read is anything to go by.

Here’s one student in this article, “The fact that I have my phone means I can use it to just reach all my friends back home. Especially within first year. I was terrified to make new friends, so I just relied on the fact that I already had some and I didn’t really bother reaching out much because I knew I already had some people, but I didn’t realise living so far away from them would be such an issue.”

This is one all year 11s, 12 and 13s should be reading and discussing in tutorial with you:

‘Lonely, terrifying and scary’: 70% of students in UK university halls feel isolated, poll shows

Students blame reliance on phones plus pressure of accommodation costs for lack of social life

the Guardian

And here’s a further resource to consider. In Martin’s latest book, co-written with Dr Jo Phillips of Sheffield University, The Backpacker’s Guide to University, there’s a series of ‘passport stamps’ for students to try, all covering various aspects of life away from home. Here’s a shonky picture of the section on joining clubs and societies, in order to make new friends and have a laugh:

(Subscribers, you’ll have an extra extract from The Backpacker’s Guide as a pdf lower down - it’s a section focusing on ‘building a network’ of connections, friends and contacts.)

*sorry. Embarrassing use of Gen Z slang is not acceptable in any circumstances.

Portal Talk...

Interest in VESPA 2.0, our updated platform, has been building fast over recent weeks, with more schools and colleges booking demos every day ahead of September.

If it's on your radar for next year, this is the week to act! Sign up before Friday 10th July to qualify for a 10% summer term discount — after that, the offer closes. Fancy a look-before-you-leap free trial? You can explore the new portal for yourself:

Get Started | VESPA Academy

VESPA Academy - Research-driven psychometric coaching platform that develops non-cognitive skills for academic success. Used by 600+ schools across 15 countries.

VESPA Academy

Or book a demo with Tony here:

VESPA Academy 2.0 - Tony Dennis

A walkthrough of the new VESPA Academy platform, including enhanced dashboards, student insights, Student Voice, updated activities, single sign-on, MIS links, faster performance, and enhanced security.Suitable for both new schools exploring VESPA and existing customers interested in migrating to

Calendly

Something to try...

We’ve been deep on a topic over the last couple of weeks, in response to a couple of staff training requests, and we’re going to share one of our interesting discoveries with subscribers. The requested session was one on building student resilience.

We already had quite a bit of material on the topic, but in exploring further, we’ve discovered something really interesting…

Happy Friday!

Way too hot for banter, folks. Let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

Martin was working with students on Wednesday as part of a Sixth Form Readiness conference - post-GCSE kids looking forward to study at the next level. These guys and gals were the lucky ones. Good high schools, supportive homes, well-fed and smartly dressed, with wealthy parents and tons of cultural capital.

They weren’t the sort of kids who’ll ever need to rely on the go-getting agency that comes with being from an ex-mining town in the North East, or having had meat-and-potatoes schooling in Manchester, or achieved against all the odds having grown up in a village in rural Lincolnshire. No shade on any of these places or circumstances - we love working with all students and all schools.

But as fate often has it, this week’s article was in our TBR pile… and was read immediately after the session with the lucky ones. It illuminated the work of the whole week, in fact. A useful lens for refocusing.

It’s written by Cate Hall. Right now, we unapologetically love Cate Hall. (We’ve got her book on pre-order.) What a backstory she has. In this video, for example, she talks about recovering from addiction, an experience which gives her what she calls, “the gift of desperation.” Towards the end, she says, “Most traits that people treat as fixed are actually quite learnable.” This includes curiosity, courage and, as you’ll see from this piece, luck.

We’ve geeked-out about this essay before, but it’s in a new expanded form. Read it with students, and challenge them to have a lucky summer:

How to increase your surface area for luck

You should just do things

Cate Hall

Now for the downer. Straight after reading Hall’s work, we came across this next piece, and the contrast was stark.

It’s an analysis of as growing online trend - looks Gen Z-ish - of claiming your hobbies are Netflix, social media and sleeping. Basically watching other people live their lives and complaining about it. What a horrible fate. 😢 Equal parts fascinating and depressing, this might not be one to share with students… though in edited form, it could lead to an interesting discussion…

The Mainstreaming of Loserdom

On staying home v. going out, brat summer, and the ethics of rotting

Tell the Bees

Something to try...

A video for you this week!

In the same session as we mentioned earlier, Martin ran a Vision activity called Above the Line, Below the Line, which encourages students to think about the array of possibilities that exist out there in the world of work.

And the students he did it with found the thinking challenging and useful. Here’s Martin talking it through for you…

Happy Friday!

Every so often we get an email like this. Always makes us laugh…

We haven’t replied 😳

OK. Enough of this nonsense, what else? Well, let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

This document is a thorough, deep review and analysis of where we’re up to with classroom learning. It’s the Deans for Impact’s second edition of The Science of Learning.

It’s beautifully put together, theme-by-theme and topic-by-topic. Each idea has a summary of existing research, plus a ‘pitfalls’ section, warning against oversimplification, assumption or error. Section 4 covers motivation, a subject dear to our hearts at the moment, and does it really well.

And there’s lots more. Download it! Essential reading folks:

The Science of Learning | Deans for Impact (DFI)

Cognitive science research on student learning, applied to teaching practices.

www.deansforimpact.org/tools-and-resources/the-science-of-learning

We’re also really enjoying Nir Eyal’s Beyond Belief, which operates in the same space as Derek Sivers’ Useful, Not True. Here’s a pic to give you a sense of it - we’ll cover it properly in a future newsletter. It’s great for students:

Brilliantly succinct and useful.

Portal Talk...

Slight change of pace today. We usually use this section to show you updates and features on the VESPA Portal, but today we are handing over to a friend.

So much of the feedback we get from schools around "Systems" comes down to one main theme - protecting students' attention long enough to get work done. Usually the biggest threat to this is sitting in their pocket. By the time we meet these kids at GCSE and A Level, we're often left picking up the pieces of broken attention spans, which is why we were glad to come across SafetyMode. They tackle the problem head-on and earlier than we do, working mainly with students aged 8–14, getting to them before the habits set in.

SafetyMode - #1 parental control app for a safe smartphone experience

In a recent Mumsnet survey, 77% of parents said keeping their child safe online feels like an impossible task, and only 1 in 3 (34%) rated the parental control apps they currently use as very effective. As a school, you're already feeling the tension between technology's benefits and its risks every day -and so are the parents in your community.

That's why SafetyMode built the OtherPhone - a safety-first smartphone co-designed with Mumsnet, who helped shape the features and tested them with their parent community. It gives children access to the benefits of smartphone technology within a safe, controlled, anti-addiction environment. SafetyMode has just released a free guide -"Phone Safety for Teens and Kids"- well worth downloading and sharing with your parent communities:

👉 Download the free guide here

Want to know more or see SafetyMode in action? Get in touch with the team directly at support@safetymode.com to request more information or a demo.

OK, back to the portal!

That’s exactly what we’re here for: helping students build the behaviours that turn good intentions into better results. If you’d like a closer look, or want to know what VESPA would cost in your setting, here the usual ways to contact us:

VESPA Academy 2.0 - Tony Dennis

A walkthrough demo of the new VESPA Academy platform.

Get Started | FREE TRIAL

Sign up for a free 14 trial, including seed students for the full experience

Request an Estimate

Want to know more about the cost? Use this link to request an estimate.

Something to try...

The focus for subscribers this week is effective independent learning, and this week’s resource is an introduction to the problems we often encounter when we’re trying to encourage students to work more independently.

So you’re getting two things today, folks - a short video in which Martin explores ‘the peeled orange problem’… yes, a slightly obscure title, we admit… and a list of possible behaviours that might constitute a solution; a more precise guide to what effective independent learning is.

So let’s have a look at what we’ve got here…

Happy Friday!

Busy times. We’ve been on the road running sessions on Building Independent Learning, Teaching for High Grades, Successful Transition to Year 13… say hello at info@vespa.academy if those topics look of interest. September’s pretty full for staff CPD but there’s a date or two left in July.

We’re at the Sixth Form Colleges Association’s Summer Conference on June 17th, so come and say hello if you’re around.

Martin writes thrillers in whatever spare time he can find, and is sharing short pieces every Friday lunchtime since he’s recently joined Substack - so aspiring fiction writers might want to sign up and see what’s happening there.

Right. Enough nonsense, let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

We really enjoyed reading Jonathan Haidt’s commencement speech to NYU’s graduates of 2026 this week. Not only does it fill us with envy - just imagine graduating now, and in New York of all places! - but its message is so powerful and hopeful we came away with a profound feeling of optimism.

At its core is Haidt’s contention that a life well lived is one in which we take control of our own attention, rather than have it captured by silicon valley billionaires intent on selling it to advertisers. Once you’re free from the tyranny of the attention economy, Haidt argues, you can ask yourself one of life’s most exciting questions. ‘What do you want to do?’

The piece is here:

Treasure Your Attention

Jonathan Haidt's advice to the NYU Class of 2026 on how to flourish in a world that raises many obstacles to human flourishing.

Jon Haidt

But we’re also going to be using it with students as a tutorial read, so we’ve given it a light edit and turned it into a handy pdf for you here, in case you want to hand copies out.

We hope you enjoy it as much as we did…

Jonathan Haidt, NYU Commencement Speech.pdf

Google Docs

Portal Talk...

The Coaching Page Gets a Face-lift

Last week I banged on about data, specifically, how VESPA 2.0 lets you spot students whose scores have quietly slipped between cycles, so interventions stop being a guessing game. This week: the coaching page! Or as we like to think of it, the page for staff who have ninety seconds between a Year 12 assembly and covering someone's Period 3.

The first thing you'll notice is what hasn't changed. The page looks and works exactly as it did before. The difference is: it's now really fast. Searching and filtering for students happens instantly, whether by name, tutor group, year or cycle.

The genuinely new addition comes courtesy of Neil Groves at Bangkok Preparatory School, who suggested it. Any member of staff supporting a student, tutor, subject teacher, head of year, etc can now add comments to their coaching record. Comments are anonymous by default, but together they build an audit trail of the support conversations happening around each student. And when it's useful, notes can be shared by email with parents, colleagues, or the student themselves.

That last feature is really the point of this piece. Neil had an idea, told us, and a few weeks later it was live in the platform. We're not a big, anonymous tech company where suggestions disappear into a weird ticketing system. We're a small, independent UK company, and our whole aim is to build something genuinely useful for schools. If there's a feature that would make VESPA work better in yours, tell us - there's a good chance you'll be the one getting thanked in this newsletter next term.

Want to see it in action with your own cohort in mind? Just a short, no-pressure demo 20 minutes, no slide deck, just the portal and your questions.

VESPA Academy 2.0 - Tony Dennis

A walkthrough of the new VESPA Academy platform, including enhanced dashboards, student insights, and much more.

...or skip the chat and go straight to a free 14-day trial. It comes pre-loaded with dummy student and staff data, so you can poke around the full portal, wobbles and all, before committing to anything.

Get Started | VESPA Academy

VESPA Academy - Research-driven psychometric coaching platform that develops non-cognitive skills for academic success. Sign up for your Free Trial.

Something to try...

At this time of year, we’re always going big on reading with students. Encouraging them to expand their capacity for focused concentration; for dealing with new and complex ideas.

In this week’s neat little powerpoint, we look at what reading is like at university. What does a university reading list look like? How do you de-code what they’re expecting?

Subscribers - we’ve got five examples here, each with slightly different features. There’s the reading list split into ‘core’ and ‘recommended’ texts. The list which tells you which chapters to begin with. The list where everything is labelled ‘essential’ and you just have to get on with it. The list with ancient texts on it. The list split down week-by-week…

Happy Friday!

Right you beautiful people, just a couple of notices before we jump in:

We’ve got a busy six weeks of staff CPD ahead of us, but there are a couple of July dates still free. If you’d like a staff CPD session on any aspect of VESPA, or on (i) building independent learning (ii) aspiration and motivation, or (iii) effective, evidence-based revision or (iv) coaching students or anything else you think we might be able to help with, let us know at info@vespa.academy, and we’ll be in touch!

Martin’s running a session for Bath Spa University’s Network for Learning on June 24th. This isn’t a freebie, sadly - it’s a paid session, but it’s a cracker. Click the image to find out more…

Alright, done. What have we got for you this week? Let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

This contribution to the handwriting-versus-typing debate is thorough and well-referenced. The writing-as-thinking element of the debate is important; we don’t write to record what we know, the argument goes, we write to discover what we know.

The activity of writing builds durable networks of learning, the article points out, as well as improving spelling. But the crucial ones for us are charts 3 and 4: writing down, rather than typing information makes us more likely to retain it, and gives us a stronger conceptual understanding of the material.

This isn’t an anti-tech piece; there’s balance there too. Well worth a read, and easy enough to go through with a tutor group as well. Click the image below to access the article:

Portal Talk

Introducing the ‘wobble’

A low score tells you something. A score that's dropped might be telling you a story. That's the idea behind one of my favourite bits of the new VESPA Academy 2.0 - tracking how students' questionnaire answers change between cycles. Not just where they are, but where they're heading.

Because averages, useful as they are, can be brilliant at hiding problems. A VESPA score is made up of lots of individual answers, and a "fine-looking" 5 or 6 can quietly contain a 1/5 on "I have a positive view of myself." That's why the portal now drills into individual question responses, not just the headline numbers. A student can look perfectly steady on the surface while sliding from "I don't let a poor test result get me down" (5/5) to... letting it get them down quite a lot (3/5). That's the wobble. And it's exactly the kind of thing that's almost impossible to spot manually across a cohort of 300.

So the portal now does the spotting for you. The AI scans thousands of responses, flags the drops, and pulls together a coaching summary so staff know where to look first -which student, which questions, which patterns. But the AI isn't the intervention.

The teacher is; the relationship is, the conversation is. All the portal does is catch the wobble earlier, so the right adult can have the right conversation at the right time. Ideally before the wobble becomes a fall!

Want to see it in action with your own cohort in mind? Just a short, no-pressure demo 20 minutes, no slide deck, just the portal and your questions.

VESPA Academy 2.0 - Tony Dennis

A walkthrough of the new VESPA Academy platform.

...or skip the chat and go straight to a free 14-day trial. It comes pre-loaded with dummy student and staff data, so you can poke around the full portal, wobbles and all, before committing to anything.

FREE TRIAL | VESPA Academy

VESPA Academy - Research-driven psychometric coaching platform that develops non-cognitive skills for academic success - Click Here to set up your free trial

Something to try...

A quick one for everyone first - have you had a look at Drive and Listen? It’s very simple - super-clear dashcam footage from taxis driving through various locations. It’s been good fun to choose a city and have it on the screen for a few minutes in a tutorial. Even virtual travel broadens the mind. (A student recently commented, as we drove through Rio De Janeiro, “Everywhere’s nicer than here, isn’t it Sir?”) 😢

Drive & Listen Original

Original website of Drive & Listen (previously driveandlisten.herokuapp.com) - Listen to local radio stations while driving through the cities around the world. Istanbul, Berlin, London, Paris, New York City and many more

Drive & Listen • Erkam Şeker

Now, subscribers, we’ve got something interesting for you this week. Recently we shared a new, unpublished VESPA activity called Behaviour, Benefit, Belief, inspired by Nir Eyal’s new book.

And here, you’ve got a ten-minute clip of Martin taking you through the thinking behind the activity in more detail…

Happy Friday!

Last issue before the holidays, folks. We’ll be back on Friday 5th June.

In the meantime, get your teeth into this lot…

Something we're reading...

We’ve already bent your ear about Rutger Bregman’s book Moral Ambition, which we loved. Bregman makes the case that, though every country has its best-and-brightest, very few successfully encourage those people into work that will actively make the world a better place.

Where do these superstar students go instead? In America at least, its mostly finance and consulting. Moving rich people’s money around and making minor changes to how multinationals are run. Bregman regards this as a colossal waste of their talents, and argues instead they should have moral ambition - that with great talent and ability comes the responsibility to explore how best to improve the world.

If you haven’t read the book, consider this video a great way in. Bregman goes to Harvard to speak to students, urging them to adopt a more proactive approach. After a little intro, what you get is an edited version of Bregman’s presentation. Half an hour of really interesting practical philosophy. One to watch yourself, but perhaps share with a sixth form tutor group, your Medics, or an Oxbridge group.

(Subscribers, you get a Moral-Ambition related bonus image lower down!)

Enjoy…

Portal Talk...

Half term is nearly here, which means one of two things: you’re either about to enjoy a very well-earned break… or you’re about to open your laptop “just for five minutes” and somehow end up planning September with 47 tabs open and a cold cup of coffee. Possibly both.

So, in the spirit of productive procrastination, we’ve opened up a free VESPA Academy 2.0 trial for anyone who would like to have a proper look around. The trial gives you access to a set of dummy users, so you can explore the platform with real-looking data rather than staring at an empty dashboard wondering what’s supposed to happen next. You can see:

• the student questionnaire

• individual VESPA reports

• coaching insights

• the new dashboards

• student reflections

• activities and interventions

• the overall feel of the rebuilt 2.0 platform

A great chance to have a look andconsider whether it might help your school, college or sixth form next year!

Scope out VESPA Academy 2.0 for free:

Get Started | VESPA Academy

VESPA Academy - Research-driven psychometric coaching platform that develops non-cognitive skills for academic success.

Freebies abound! We’re also running a free, 30-minute online session with Martin Griffin on Wednesday 3 June at 4.00pm.

Martin will look at why some students underperform even when they appear to be working hard, how the VESPA model helps identify the habits behind performance, and how structured coaching conversations can help students move from vague advice to practical action. A replay will be shared with everyone who registers, so no panic if half-term brain has already taken over by then 😁

Register below:

The Learning Behaviours Behind Student Performance

A free 30-minute session with Martin Griffin, co-author of The A Level Mindset, exploring the learning behaviours that sit behind student performance

Finally, in a terrifying act of modern professionalism, we are trying to get better at LinkedIn! Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing more of the story behind VESPA Academy, the move to 2.0, and how schools are using the model to support better student conversations. So if you’re on LinkedIn and fancy joining us over there, come and say hello.

Follow the VESPA LinkedIn posts:
Tony Dennis | LinkedIn | Martin Griffin | LinkedIn | Steve Oakes | LinkedIn

As always, if you would like to learn more about what we do, please book in a demo and a chat below:

VESPA Academy 2.0 - Tony Dennis

A walkthrough of the new VESPA Academy platform

Something to try...

Brad Stulberg, a journalist, writer and staff member at The University of Michigan, has written a new book, The Way of Excellence. In it, he ponders what excellence might mean on an individual level - not in terms of grinding it out, beating the competition, or having hyper-focussed success in a single field. Stulberg’s thinking is much wider, and more humane; more what does a satisfying, fully-rounded life lived to the full look like?

Recently, he reflected on everything he’d learned writing the book, and shared 35 insights. We’ve edited and trimmed, and turned Stulberg’s suggestions into a powerpoint for you! This will make a really good assembly or tutorial activity…

Happy Friday!

We’ve got one more newsletter to go after this one, then we’re disappearing for two weeks. But don’t worry, there’s enough in the next two issues to last you a month, honest.

Before we start, thanks to those who showed up for the catch-up webinar - lovely to see you - and thanks for the positive comments and messages afterwards too. If you’ve requested the powerpoint, it should be with you by now. Shout if it hasn’t yet arrived!

Right, let’s jump in.

Something we're reading...

OK so this is an interesting one.

Sweden used to have a strong reputation educationally, and appeared towards the top of PISA rankings. But then something went wrong. Post 2012, they began to drop, and more recently, have arrived at a point where there are more problems with functional literacy amongst Swedish students than there are in the UK and (gulp) the US.

So why’s it all gone pear-shaped? One argument is that the troubles began upon the compulsory introduction of screen-based technologies at Primary level. Now there’s an attempt being made to reverse this.

OK, before you read, disclaimer time: we’re not going to pretend to know much about Swedish politics, and the phrase ‘right-wing coalition’ doesn’t sound great, but the Education Minister’s previous role was as Leader of the Liberal Party, so… point is, we can’t comment on the composition of Sweden’s government or decisions and policies made outside of this one. It’s the old ‘views expressed by Sweden’s ministers may not reflect those of The Friday Mindset’, basically 😂

Now all that’s out of the way - this is a really interesting piece, and there’s a half-hour documentary hyperlinked within as well. It’s well worth reading, and could make a good tutorial discussion.

Back to books - Sweden's schools cutting back on digital learning

Swedish classrooms swap laptops for books, pens and paper, raising concerns from the tech sector.

BBC News

Portal Talk...

VESPA Videos have been live for subscribers for a while… but we’ve been working on a simple log-in system for you folks.

If you’re short on a tutorial idea, or you’re out of inspiration for an upcoming assembly, maybe a brilliant 3-minute video will do the heavy lifting for you.

Yep, subscribers, a reminder you’ve got total access to our VESPA video library, a curated collection of handpicked favourites and original content covering Vision, Effort, Systems, Practice and Attitude. Think of it as a nicely organised cupboard of useful clips except without the dried-up glue sticks, mystery cables and mystery laminated sheet from 2009.

You can use the videos in tutor time, PSHE sessions, assemblies, or share them directly with students. You can search by topic, browse by VESPA dimension, or use the “Find by student challenge” tool to match a video to what your students actually need right now. We’re tagging them so that you can select a problem such as…

‘Low motivation’
‘Poor organisation’
‘Revision panic’

…and many more. Got a student who has highlighted an entire textbook and called it “active revision”? There’s probably a video for that too.

Good news if you’re already using the portal at your school — VESPA Videos are already included as part of your school’s VESPA subscription. No extra cost, no separate login,
no new password to forget, reset, write on a Post-it, lose, and then blame on IT. You’ll find the full video library in your Staff Resources area, alongside VESPA Slides, the Curriculum Hub, and VESPA Posters. Just sign in as normal at:

app.vespa.academy

Free-tier subscribers, you folks can upgrade for £5/month and get full access to the video library. And if you’re new to all this, and you’d like to see VESPA Videos in action, or have a look around the new VESPA Academy 2.0 platform we’d be very happy to show you!

VESPA Academy 2.0 - Tony Dennis

A walkthrough of the new VESPA Academy platform.

Something to try...

Often we’ll work with schools and colleges who want VESPA to be more seamlessly embedded into classroom practice, not just something discussed during tutorial sessions.

We’ve developed a resource that gives them a starting point. It’s called VESPA Departmental Audits, and it’s a document that sets out a number of ideas and expectations for classroom teachers to consider and reflect upon; a chance for them to effectively self-assess.

There are five sections, one for each element of the model, and we thought we’d share a section with subscribers today…

Happy Friday!

Before we get started, a quick announcement. Back in February, we ran a training session, and promised to repeat it for those of you who couldn’t make it. A reminder of the content:

“We’ve been doing a fair bit of work recently with disengaged students who are two or more grades from where they want to be, and are mired in despondency and inertia. It’s a tough gig… but we think we’ve got something that’s making a difference, and we’d like to share it. We’ll be trying to keep numbers small, so get in quickly!”

We’ve called it Effective Pre-Exam Intervention. Here’s the repeat date and time:

DATE: Wednesday May 6th, at 3:45pm for 45 minutes.

TOPIC: Effective Pre-Exam Intervention

If you missed it last time and fancy coming along, say hello at info@vespa.academy, and we’ll send you the Zoom link.

OK, done. Let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

We had fun with Richard Calcutta’s Attack of the Zombie Learning Theories this week. It’s a neat piece, succinctly written, well referenced, and amusingly illustrated.

A good one to read yourself, or perhaps take a class through:

Attack of the Zombie Learning Theories!

Science has proven many popular learning theories wrong. So why do they still creep up in schools and classrooms?

ASCD

We half-expected Carol Dweck’s work on Growth Mindset to be present, such has been the patchiness of replication attempts in recent years.

The long and short of it: some studies (6500 students) show GM has an affect on student achievement, but other studies (over 500 students) demonstrate it doesn’t. The attitude component of VESPA has always included growth mindset alongside other constructs such as buoyancy, agency, self-confidence, and optimism, so we’re always eager to read new evidence arguing either perspective.

If you fancy checking out a pretty brutal takedown of GM - balanced in places but, on the whole, brutal - try this one. And if you need a quick crash course on the replication crisis…

Portal talk…

Just a quick reminder this week, about our new VESPA 2.0 online features:

One-click sign in - staff and students can sign in with their existing Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace accounts. No more password spreadsheets.

A proper student hub - questionnaire, report, activities, task board, study planner, calendar all in one place. Dark mode included, because apparently this matters very much…

A redesigned home page - a cleaner starting point for staff and students, helping everyone get to the right place more quickly.

Student Voice - a brand-new tool that lets you ask your own custom questions alongside the VESPA questionnaire. Think of it as a pulse check that runs itself.

New UCAS application system - students can build and share their UCAS applications more easily, with pastoral and subject staff able to view, support and advise at the right points in the process.

Lightning-fast dashboards - cohort data loads dramatically faster, with clearer national benchmarks, percentage-based comparisons and improved distribution charts.

Smart coaching overview - filter, sort and drill into student data faster than ever. AI-generated coaching narratives, intervention finder and simple export options are all built in.

Lovely stuff! Migration’s simple we can help set up your staff accounts, connect your student directory, and make sure your existing VESPA data carries over smoothly. Book a quick call and we’ll show you the new platform:

VESPA Academy 2.0 - Migration - Tony Dennis

A meeting for current VESPA Portal users, to see a demo and gain early access to the new site

Calendly

Something to try...

Recently we’ve worked with an organisation to help them draw-up a list of student study behaviours all staff could get behind. This particular college wanted to get away from vague exhortations (‘work harder’, ‘revise more’) and instead replace them with simple, replicable behaviours that all students could assess themselves on, engage with, and introduce into their studies. (Behaviours that could then be shared with parents too.)

Working with them on the project, we landed upon three domains for habit and study behaviour development, and chose eight key behaviours for each domain:

1. 8 Behaviours In the Classroom

2. 8 Behaviours During Study Periods

3. 8 Behaviours for Successful Revision.

Subscribers - you’ve got all three lists to take a look at below…

Happy Friday!

It’s the business end of the year, the sun’s out and exams are approaching. Lots to share in the coming weeks, so let’s dive in!

Something we're reading...

This is an interesting read for at least two reasons - (i) it’s real and recent, drawing on large data sets and (ii) it demonstrates something we felt would happen.

The workplace analysis company ActivTrak study organisations and report on how employees are spending their time, what kind of work they’re doing, and what they feel about it. In the piece below, ActivTrak analysed millions of hours of white-collar employee activity in preparation for their 2026 state of the workplace report.

Their focus? How AI was changing employee workplace behaviour. Now, we regularly hear from doom-mongers that AI will do everything for us and there’ll be no jobs left. (The doom-mongers in question are, of course, in charge of large AI companies who are trying to secure funding and want to look like they have a revolutionary product.)

When ActivTrak examined this, what did they find? Rather than remove jobs entirely, AI has actually increased workload. And get this: “The amount of time AI users devoted to focused, uninterrupted work - the kind of concentration often required for figuring out complex problems, writing formulas, creating and strategizing - fell 9%, compared with nearly no change for nonusers.”

So AI seems to be increasing workload at the same time as decreasing opportunities for focus. 

This is well-worth reading if we’re going to give students balanced, objective, hyperbole-free advice about the world of work, and steer clear of the I-feel-sorry-for-your-generation pessimism they might be hearing from elsewhere.

ActivTrak Productivity Lab: AI Is Accelerating Work, Not Replacing It

The ActivTrak Productivity Lab today released its 2026 State of the Workplace report, analyzing one of the world’s largest behavioral datasets on how work

www.activtrak.com/news/state-of-the-workplace-ai-accelerating-work

And a neat piece to go with it as well. Cal Newport looking at the extent to which AI is affecting the graduate job market and finding… well, it doesn’t seem to be.

Newport posts these videos/podcast episodes every Thursday, debunking lots of industry-driven nonsense, so they’re good to check-in with. Enjoy:

Portal Talk...

There are few sounds more familiar in school life than:

“Sir, I can’t log in.”
“Miss, it’s not loading.”
“Which tab am I supposed to be on?”

We can’t promise to solve every admin problem in education, we’re not miracle workers! But we have been working very hard on one of them. So, say hello to VESPA Academy 2.0

Over the past year - as always - we’ve been steadily improving the VESPA platform. You may already have noticed some of those changes: refreshed designs, updated activities, improved layouts and a cleaner experience for students and staff.

We haven’t changed what works. The VESPA Questionnaire, student reports and core activities will all still feel familiar. What we have rebuilt is the engine underneath, making the platform faster, simpler to access, easier to navigate, and much more useful for staff working with whole cohorts. VESPA Academy 2.0 is designed around the way schools actually use VESPA: finding the right students quickly, understanding the story behind the data, and turning questionnaire results into meaningful coaching conversations.

What’s new?

One-click sign in - staff and students can sign in with their existing Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace accounts. No more password spreadsheets.

A proper student hub - questionnaire, report, activities, task board, study planner, calendar all in one place. Dark mode included, because apparently this matters very much…

A redesigned home page - a cleaner starting point for staff and students, helping everyone get to the right place more quickly.

Student Voice - a brand-new tool that lets you ask your own custom questions alongside the VESPA questionnaire. Think of it as a pulse check that runs itself.

New UCAS application system - students can build and share their UCAS applications more easily, with pastoral and subject staff able to view, support and advise at the right points in the process.

Lightning-fast dashboards - cohort data loads dramatically faster, with clearer national benchmarks, percentage-based comparisons and improved distribution charts.

Smart coaching overview - filter, sort and drill into student data faster than ever. AI-generated coaching narratives, intervention finder and simple export options are all built in.

“But I’m happy with the current system…”

No one in education is sitting around thinking, “What I really need this week is a brand-new system to learn.” So, just to be clear, the questionnaire is familiar. The reports are familiar. The activities are familiar. The coaching model is familiar. The difference is that the new version is quicker, cleaner and much easier to manage especially for staff working across large cohorts, coordinating UCAS support, or trying to spot which students need help before small issues become big ones.

The current portal isn’t disappearing overnight, so there’s no need to panic. But VESPA Academy 2.0 is where we’re heading. Schools already using it are telling us the speed difference alone makes a real impact, especially when trying to get useful data quickly before tutor meetings, interventions or student conversations.

Ready to move across?

Migration is straightforward, and we’ll support you through the process. We can help set up your staff accounts, connect your student directory, and make sure your existing VESPA data carries over smoothly. In most cases, schools can be up and running very quickly.

Book a quick call and we’ll show you the new platform:

VESPA Academy 2.0 - Migration - Tony Dennis

A meeting for current VESPA Portal users, to see a demo and gain early access to the new site

New to VESPA Academy?

This is a great time to take a look.

VESPA Academy helps schools turn questionnaire data into meaningful coaching conversations, giving staff a clear way to support students with motivation, organisation, revision, resilience and attitude. The new platform makes that process faster, clearer and easier to manage across a whole cohort from VESPA reports and coaching conversations to student voice, UCAS support and targeted interventions.

Book a quick call below and we’ll take you through it.

VESPA Academy 2.0 - Tony Dennis

A walkthrough of the new VESPA Academy platform, for users new to the Portal

Something to try...

Every now and again an idea drops in our lap and we can’t resist turning it into a VESPA activity. Maybe these will build-up enough to make a new book, maybe not…

Anyway, we were reading about Nir Eyal’s new book Beyond Belief, and tracked down an extract which explored a really neat idea for behaviour change. Eyal explores the Three Bs: Behaviour, Benefit, Belief. When combined, he argues, people tend to feel more motivated, and are more likely to follow through with commitments to improve their lives.

So we’ve given the idea a study-based twist in this effort activity…

Happy Friday!

Two quick notices before we jump in this week. First…

Yes, our wonderful publisher Crown House are running a flash sale that ends today! It’s a flippin’ amazing 50% off pretty much all stock, they tell us, which means it’s the perfect time to bulk buy. Some of these beauties below will cost you just over a fiver. A fiver, folks! Fancy taking advantage? Follow these links or forward them to your librarian:

The Backpacker’s Guide to University

The VESPA Handbook

The Student Mindset

The GCSE Mindset

The A Level Mindset

Oh-kay. Secondly, a reminder that we’re filling up in the Summer for staff CPD so if you’re looking ahead to staff inset days and you fancy a session (i) introducing VESPA, or on (ii) Building Independent Learning, or (iii) Motivation, Goal-setting and Agency, or (iv) Evidence-based Revision, or (v) anything else VESPA-adjacent, get in touch at info@vespa.academy and we’ll fit you in!

Once last thing - this is our last newsletter before Easter, remember, so you’ll be seeing us again in a few weeks. Right, let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

This study has been an interesting one to pick apart this week. Here’s the long and short of it:

• Students are asked to do a very short bursts of revision in preparation for a test - just 24 minutes, split into two 12 minute sections.

• They’re split into three groups. One group note-take. The next write extended explanations of the material they’re reading. The third are asked to plan and prepare a lesson.

Just 24 minutes is all the three groups spend - how much impact could that have on a 12-mark exam taken a little later on? Well, enough to make a statistically significant difference in recall, that’s for sure.

And there’s an interesting theory explored in this paper as well - that those students preparing to teach are imbued with a confidence - a ‘power’, the study calls it - that is the result of preparing to be an expert on a subject; a rise in agency, perhaps, a change of mindset.

You can download the pdf of the paper here. It’s a pretty approachable one, fairly straightforward to read, (statistical analysis aside!)

The Powerful Teacher: A Power Hypothesis for the Benefits of Learning-by-Teaching - Educational Psychology Review

Why does teaching others enhance one’s learning? This study advanced a novel power hypothesis of learning-by-teaching: When assuming the role of a teacher, students experience a heightened sense of power in influencing others, which increases their own learning. Indeed, teaching is powerful.

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-025-10097-1

Portal Talk...

The Easter Bunny has been busy this week! Not with chocolate eggs, but with something arguably even more exciting for schools: a free downloadable VESPA poster set 😂

You can find it here:

VESPA Academy — The Five Habits of Academic Success

We have made our VESPA poster set free for schools to access, download and print.

The page opens with the main VESPA poster, but it is also interactive. Just click at the top of the page to open individual posters for each of the five VESPA elements: Vision, Effort, Systems, Practice and Attitude.

The main poster gives a clear overview of the VESPA model, and at the top of the page you can also click through to open individual posters for each of the five elements -Vision, Effort, Systems, Practice and Attitude.

Perfect for classrooms, sixth form centres, study spaces, tutor rooms or anywhere students might benefit from a quiet reminder that success is usually a bit more Vision and Effort than last-minute panic and wishful thinking.

We should be honest: this is, of course, a little bit of VESPA marketing dressed up as a helpful Easter freebie. But it’s also genuinely useful, looks good on a wall, and is completely free for any school to download and print, whether you use the VESPA Coaching Portal or not.

And if you are not yet using the portal, but would like to see how schools are using VESPA more fully through questionnaires, reports, coaching tools and practical student activities, you are very welcome to get in touch. It is the last week to take advantage of our free VESPA Questionnaire cycle promotion, so do get in touch if you would like to learn more!

Newsletter Promotion - Tony Dennis

Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal (limited taster access) so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students in the period it matters most.

Something to try...

We’ve taken this week’s paper (above) and turned it into a powerpoint for subscribers!

It’s not just a handful of slides explaining the study, though. We wanted to give you more then that.

What you’re getting is a complete explanation of why not all revision is equal. You’ll be introduced to three types of revision, then given a list of imaginary students who each limit themselves to a particular revision strategy. Great for a tutorial or classroom activity where your learners get to predict which students will do best…

Happy Friday!

Easter’s nearly with us! (We know our Welsh colleagues only have another week to go, the lucky so-and-sos…) We’ll be pinging you another newsletter, 183, on Friday 27th, then we’ll be taking a break before returning after Easter in April.

Before we start, a quick announcement: we’re filling up in the Summer for staff CPD and student sessions. There’s still some availability through May, June and July, but it’s getting pretty full now, so if you’re looking ahead to staff inset days and you fancy a session (i) introducing VESPA, or on (ii) Building Independent Learning, or (iii) Motivation, Goal-setting and Agency, or (iv) Evidence-based Revision, or (v) anything else VESPA-adjacent, get in touch at info@vespa.academy and we’ll fit you in!

Right, let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

Two items of interest in the AI space this week. First, this is a bit of fun, but should also generate some discussion. It’s a quiz in which you - and more importantly, students! - have to guess how good large language models were at solving a series of problems.

For each problem, the AI models were given ten attempts, so the question is the same for each task - how many correct attempts, out of 10, were made each time?

At the end, your answers are compared to the real outcomes so you can see if you’re someone who overestimates AI’s ability, or underestimates. It’s a decent tutorial activity!

Can you predict what AI will do?

quiz.wholesum.tech

OK, next. This study of AI and cheating came to our attention a little while ago and we forgot to share it.

On first reading, there’s a lot that’s shocking and depressing about this. Yeah, we mean the percentage of American students who admit to engaging in academic dishonesty. After a bit of reflection, though, we thought let’s get real. If we’d been asked if we’d cheated in some small way back in high school - copying someone else’s homework is included for example - we’d have had to fess up. What student doesn’t spend high school borrowing ideas, stealing a few sentences that start an essay in just the right way, half-inching someone’s take and passing it off as their own, or fibbing about where a solution came from? (Though we never engaged in anything above that level, you understand…)

Before you take a look, some headlines to reflect on:

• “24.27% of students reported using artificial intelligence as unauthorized aids during assessments, assignments, or homework.”

• However, when the researchers dug deeper, most students weren’t using it to generate an entire response for them; the top uses were “idea generation” and “text summary.”

• But some students - between 9 and 15% depending upon the type of school - are using AI to generate entire responses.

Long and short of it folks, despite the arrival of LLMs, cheating has remained broadly stable. Don’t skip the paper though, there’s loads of interesting findings. (At a push, ask ChatGTP to summarise it for you 😂…)

Cheating in the second year of generative AI chatbots: a follow-up study on high school student cheating behaviors

This study examines the evolving relationship between AI chatbots and academic integrity and students’ AI chatbot usage in high schools one and a half years after the release of ChatGPT.

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11423-026-10587-1

Something to try...

Last week we shared a video Martin recorded for a group of schools, covering reward systems that encourage students to revise effectively.

And this week we’ve got one more for you; one that’s thematically linked. This one’s a whistle-stop tour of motivation, looking at how to create a culture that promotes motivated study, as well as how individuals can motivate themselves…

Happy Friday!

Let’s dive straight in this week.

Something we're reading...

We crossed paths with a really interesting study recently. 600-odd students’ time management skills, and decision-making skills, were assessed against their use of social media. We know that high levels of engagement with short-form video reduce concentration, but might they affect time management, and even decision-making?

Well… the effect sizes are small but the answer is yes, as it turns out. Before we look at the study itself, we thought you might be interested in the two scales used to measure (i) time management and (ii) decision making. Your own students could take the questionnaires if you wanted to involve them, reproduce the study, or just raise awareness.

The time management measure is a famous one - if students want to take the questionnaire themselves, you can use this image:

And students can take the decision-making questionnaire used in the study here:

Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire, MDMQ

Online version of the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire (MDMQ) designed to assess how individuals approach decision situations.

psytests.org/coping/mdmqen.html#:~:text=Online%20version%20of%20the%20Melbourne,Mann%2C%201982).

OK, on to the study itself, which is here:

Frontiers | The relationships between social media use, time management, and decision-making styles

The present study examined the relationship between social media use, time management, and decision-making styles. The sample consisted of 612 student participants…

www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1702767/full?hl=en-US

But what were the exact findings? we hear you cry. Effect-sizes are small, but…

• “we observed a positive association between academic achievement and time management skills… time management behaviours (e.g., goal setting) are related to perceived control, which in turn is associated with beneficial outcomes such as reduced stress and better performance.”

• “…longer social media use emerged as a significant negative predictor of the time planning, time attitudes and time wasters subscales. These results suggest that higher levels of social media use tend to be accompanied by lower time management scores.”

• “We found positive associations between social media use and the buckpassing, procrastinating, and hypervigilance dimensions of [decision-making]… greater social media use was associated with lower decision self-esteem and lower vigilance (careful decision-making).”

Interesting stuff!

Portal Talk...

Staying with phones for a little longer now. During student sessions, we’re often gathering live responses to questions, then showing students their compiled answers. One of our questions is, “in a one-hour revision session, how many times do you check your phone?” Here’s some data we collected in a recent session:

Over half say it is 6 times or more. Less than ten percent say they don’t check for the full hour. Blimey. As our activity in The VESPA Handbook, Deep Work and Distraction Cost explores, if students are breaking concentration every few minutes, revision becomes shallower, slower and far less effective. That’s why we spend so much time helping students build stronger routines and more deliberate control over their attention!

We were interested recently to speak with Bertie Aspinall, Co-Founder of SafetyMode ,

SafetyMode has been developed in partnership with Mumsnet. They’re a social impact product - the plan is to give schools more control over students’ smartphone use on site. In effect, it allows schools to limit which apps are accessible on school grounds, making smartphones a lot less smart, at least during the school day. The platform also includes gizmos that can block or flag harmful content in real time, without data leaving the phone.

SafetyMode is currently looking for schools interested in joining a trial, and we’re happy to help them spread the word. Participating schools can offer the tool to parents at a discounted rate, hopefully helping align the approach between school and home. So if your school is trying to balance the reality that students have smartphones, parents expect contact, and staff don’t want to spend all day acting as app police as well as asking every second kid to tuck their shirt in, Safetymode might be worth a look. If you’re interested, contact Bertie at bertie@safetymode.com or Tony at tony@vespa.academy or find out more by clicking the logo above.

…and if you’d like to see how we help schools tackle revision habits, focus and independent learning more broadly, you can book a short demo of the VESPA Portal here:

Newsletter Promotion - Tony Dennis

Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal (limited taster access) so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students — in real tutor time — during the period it matters most.

Something to try...

We’ve got a video for you today! In it, Martin discusses reward systems designed to motivate students to revise effectively.

Not all organisations have this one right. Some assume the exam results are reward enough, others over-reward what should be expected study-behaviours; it’s a tricky balance to strike, so hopefully this could give you a starting point for discussion…

Happy Friday!

This week, this, from BBC Maestro, caught our eye…

We’re using it to discuss the inevitability of inconsistent performance in the early stages of practice.

Last chance on this one: fancy a fifteen-session curriculum exploring effective, evidence-based revision for KS4 or 5 students? Maybe you want to come along to a session Martin’s running for Bath Spa University’s Network for Learning on March 12th. You get a handout for all fifteen sessions, plus the powerpoint if you want it. A bargain at twice the price! Here are the details - click the pic:

And another reminder: it’s the perfect time of year for snagging yourself a few copies of this beauty! Click the pic - or if you want to go direct to the publisher, you can do so here:

Right. Let's dive in.

Something we're reading...

We spent a long train journey to a college we’re working with, listening to this excellent episode of Amol Rajan’s Radical, in which he talks to Zero Gravity founder Joe Seddon about education and social mobility.

It’s a fascinating listen. We took a lot of notes. Seddon’s an economist, so there’s an undeniable value-for-money focus on his messaging, particularly on university courses - it’s something we’ve thought about a lot since listening. Seddon argues certain degrees from certain universities aren’t worth the time and debt; labour-market information shows us these graduates are highly unlikely to ever pay their loans back. Seddon’s position on this is clear - these courses shouldn’t be run. We’re a little less black-and-white on the issue…

Whatever your views, it’s a great conversation, time-stamped if you want to jump through it topic-by-topic. Enjoy!

Radical with Amol Rajan - Social Mobility: How to Break the Link Between Background and Opportunity (Joe Seddon) - BBC Sounds

Regional inequality is holding people back, and Joe Seddon wants to do something about it.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002rgj9

Then, on the journey home we had a read of this - a recent report from The Sutton Trust, also worth a look:

Degrees of Difference - The Sutton Trust

What role does higher education play in driving social mobility across the world?

www.suttontrust.com/our-research/degrees-of-difference

Portal Talk...

A quick reminder of our newsletter promotion for you this week. Book a demo with us, and you get a free round of the VESPA questionnaire for up to 100 students:

Newsletter Promotion - Tony Dennis

Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal (limited taster access) so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students — in real tutor time — during the period it matters most.

calendly.com/vespaacademy/newsletter-promotion?utm_source=vespa.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=friday-mindset-179

Something to try...

A video and accompanying handout for subscribers today!

We’re often asked to record online material for CPD platforms. Some platforms survive, others pivot or vanish, and we’re left with the recordings and nothing to do with them. So this week we thought we’d clip a section to share with you.

In this one, you’re getting Steve and Martin introducing a Practice activity from The VESPA Handbook called Verbal Recaps. It’s a quick and powerful way to get students revising in a more cognitively active way…

Happy Friday!

Hope you had a good break folks.

Three things before we kick-off. First, here’s a lovely one for the new half term: a motto or manifesto -

Next, a quick item of business - The Backpacker’s Guide to University continues to garner some lovely reviews, and it’s the perfect time of year to distribute some copies - why not bag your library a few?

And finally, an online training course. Run by Martin, this one’s via Bath Spa University’s Network for Learning. It’s a cracker - fifteen sessions to boost effective revision at KS4 and 5, each with handouts. There’s still a couple of places left so click the pic if you want to know more:

OK, all done. Onto this week’s stuff - let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

We’ve really enjoyed this piece by psychologist Rob Lefort about failure. He writes with a measured clarity that students will, with a bit of work, really get.

“Most of us get stuck,” he argues, “because we can’t separate the act from the actor… make a mistake, and suddenly you’re not someone who did something wrong, you’re someone who is wrong.” And he goes on, expressing an idea in one sentence that we’ve tried and failed to say so precisely in hundreds of attempts: “when the mistake is who you are, rather than what you did, there’s nothing to build on.”

We don’t love the brief and weirdly pointless reference to the Manhattan Project (unless we’ve misunderstood something?) Other than that, it’s a terrific read, a really good one for students. Here it is:

Succeeding at Failure: Why Getting it Wrong is How You Get it Right

Most people get failure wrong—they either ignore it or let it define them. Here's how to fail productively, extract the lessons, and actually grow from your mistakes.

www.theuntangledself.com/p/succeeding-at-failure-why-getting

Portal Talk...

The tabs problem is over.

You know the one. Student sits down for their termly review. The conversation is going well. You've got their VESPA coaching report open, you understand their mindset, you're getting somewhere, and then someone mentions their UCAS application and suddenly you're wrestling with three other windows, a PDF someone emailed you in September, and a reference you definitely started but can't find.

We’ve decided to do something about this!

Introducing VESPA's new UCAS suite — live now.

The UCAS application now lives right alongside the VESPA coaching report. Same page. Same conversation. No switching, no losing your thread.

The new UCAS Feature sits above the current VESPA Coaching Report

Tutors get a full view of each student's application progress and can write their reference with a split-screen showing the student's VESPA report simultaneously. No more toggling back and forth trying to remember what you were about to write.

Tutor View - Tutors get a full 360 view. Subject references, student draft application and VESPA comments all in one place.

Better still: subject teachers can add comments directly, and students can request them. So by the time an application reaches a tutor, it already has a complete, 360° picture (the coaching data, the subject insights, the student's own words) all in one place.

The bit tutors will love most?

The UCAS Feedback Coach reviews each student's application before it reaches you. It gives tailored, specific feedback on draft personal statements so that by the time it lands on you it's already well-formed. You're adding your expertise and experience, not rewriting from scratch. Fewer back-and-forths. More meaningful conversations.

Our UCAS Feedback is designed to provide students with feedback and guidance BEFORE the application reaches the tutor

Coming soon: UniGuide 🧭

The final piece of the puzzle. A short conversation with our AI Uniguide advisor helps students figure out not just what they're applying for, but why, and surfaces the right courses and universities to match. Think of it as the conversation a careers advisor would have, available to every student, every time.

More on that very soon. In the meantime, if you want to see the UCAS suite in action, book in below.

Newsletter Promotion

Interested in the UCAS Feature? Or simply wish to learn more about our portal? Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal.

Something to try...

A new VESPA activity for subscribers today! There’s already 120 of them - 40 in The A Level Mindset, another 40 in The GCSE Mindset, and 40 new ones in the award-winning VESPA Handbook… but we come across new research all the time, and we can’t help ourselves.

This is an Effort activity called The Try Your Best Effect. In 2014, 25,000 students were asked if they ‘tried their best’ to do three school/college related study things.

Those who said they did, had their exam results compared to those who didn’t. And the effect was marked…

Happy Friday!

It’s our last issue before half term! We made it. Barely alive, and ready for a long lie-in. We’ll be taking our usual two weeks off writing this, then coming back on Friday February 27th.

Our training session (Effective Exam Intervention) is now full. If you missed last week’s announcement and you’re kicking yourself, we’re hoping to run the session again nearer to Easter, so keep an eye out.

OK, in the meantime, we’ve got some great stuff to share, so let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

Clinical Psychologist Ross White works with organisations on building flexibility and resilience. This piece caught our eye recently, with its focus on purpose (and by extension, the vision element of VESPA.)

The commonly used idea of ‘seeking’ or ‘finding’ purpose is an unhelpful one, White argues. The replacement of ‘finding’ with ‘forming’ in the essay title was a useful one for us, as was the suggested activity, which White calls ‘a day on purpose’, during which clients design a day away from work, lived entirely deliberately and purposefully rather than accidentally.

Here it is:

Your purpose isn’t something to find, it’s something you form | Psyche Ideas

In my therapy office, I’ve found that to live with greater purpose, we must think differently about where it comes from

psyche.co/ideas/your-purpose-isnt-something-to-find-its-something-you-form

Portal Talk...

A reminder this week about FL4SH — Tony’s revision app designed around the forgetting/retrieval loop, so revision becomes a habit rather than a panic.

What it helps with:

• All UK exam boards — AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR, WJEC/Eduqas, CCEA and SQA. (Also International and Vocational Qualifications)

• Course-specific content — not generic “Biology”, but your GCSE or A-Level specification and topic structure

• Fast flashcard creation — so students actually make the cards (instead of planning to make them)

• Spaced repetition built in — the app nudges the right cards at the right time, before they fade

Want to have a sneak peek? Follow the link below…

FL4SH - Flashcard App for GCSE & A-Level

Download FL4SH now on iOS and Android. AI-powered flashcards, 10,000+ exam topics, past papers included. Get Pro free for 30 days.

www.fl4shcards.com

Something to try...

A parent was telling us about the difficulty her teenage son has got himself into. Three A levels and an EPQ - which means loads of submissions all coming at once. He’s disorganised, demotivated, and faced with the prospect of three major hand-ins, none of which he’s got round to actually starting yet. He’s done the counting - and it’s 10,000 words in a month or he’s toast.

So we’ve put together a document for him, one that helps him stay on track, but also gives him tips for staying motivated.

And we thought we’d share it with subscribers, in case you’re dealing with a student who’s fallen behind and is facing an epic fight to stay in the game…

Happy Friday!

OK, we have a free training session coming up. We’ve been doing a fair bit of work recently with disengaged students who are two or more grades from where they want to be, and are mired in despondency and inertia. It’s a tough gig… but we think we’ve got something that’s making a difference, and we’d like to share it.

We’ll be trying to keep numbers small, so get in quickly! The details:

DATE: Monday February 9th, at 3:45pm for 45 minutes.

TOPIC: Effective Pre-Exam Intervention

If you’d like to come along, email info@vespa.academy, and we’ll send you the Zoom link. Of course you’ll get the all-important powerpoint too.

OK! Onto this week’s stuff.

We’ve not banged on about resolutions at all this year. We’ve been keeping our powder dry having been inspired by Austin Kleon. “February’s a better month for resolutions than January,” Kleon argues in a piece called ‘A Clean Four Weeks’…

A clean four weeks - Austin Kleon

February is a good month for a Practice and Suck Less challenge.

austinkleon.com/2021/02/01/a-clean-four-weeks

…and the notion got us thinking. Could we set a Four Week February Resolution?

Let’s dive in…

Something we're reading...

Scott Young writes well here about strategies to help you read one book per week.

So how about we all share the same February Resolution - to read four books by March 1st. If you’re short on ideas, we’re going to suggest your four-book curriculum right here. But first, Young’s quick and simple guide to reading more:

How to Read One Book Per Week (Even if You Read Slowly) - Scott H Young

Nine strategies I use to read a book per week. No speed-reading required.

www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2025/12/10/read-one-book-per-week

Now your suggestions. We’ve kept them all relatively short, and we’ve chosen stuff we’ve read and loved…

Week One

Vision, ambition, purpose

Week Two

Calm, effective, reflective

Week Three

When to quit

Week Four

Working class kids

…but what do we know? Read four books you’re excited to get your teeth into. And spread the word among your students too!

Bonus: Adam Mastroianni (a regular here) argues, in another beautifully constructed essay, that the death of reading has actually been exaggerated…

Text is king

read on, queen

www.experimental-history.com/p/text-is-king

Something to try...

We read a lot about AI, regularly, and keep up to date with what’s going on.

And what really gets us mad is the “it’s coming for our jobs and no-one’s safe” white-collar-blood-bath narrative we hear so often. It’s ill-informed guesswork and it’s bad for students. No wonder nouveau nihilism is on the rise.

So in this week’s powerpoint, we’re taking you through a fascinating AI-related study.

A group of computer programmers - often cited as the first profession that will be entirely culled - are tasked with using AI to help complete a series of regular work jobs. You’ll be amazed at what happens…

Happy Friday!

No time to lose, let’s dive in.

Something we're reading...

This article, from The Guardian, caught our attention a couple of Sundays ago. It’s definitely one to read with students at KS4 or 5 - an interesting exploration of a study about the likelihood of sticking to challenging personal goals.

The piece outlines the difference between intrinsically motivating goals - where the process of pursuing the goal is in itself a positive experience, and the outcome is less important - and extrinsically motivating goals - where the process of pursuit is challenging, often unpleasant, but the outcome is highly desirable.

Which type of goal leads to greater commitment? Well, the clue’s in the article-title.

OK, so there’s a number of irritating adverts cluttering the screen in the online version, so we’ve also trimmed the piece so it fits on 2 sides of A4, and turned it into a handy, ad-free pdf for you.

The piece itself is here:

Why pleasure is the key to self-improvement

Forget puritanical self-discipline – the way to really make a new habit stick is to lace it with instant gratification

www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/11/why-pleasure-is-the-key-to-self-improvement

And here’s your ad-free version:

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation - David Robson article.pdf

drive.google.com/file/d/1Sptk15A4syV-4XT0tZ8lJ5_JcFMcT0AR/view?usp=sharing

Finally, if you fancy reading the research Robson’s article references, it’s led by Kaitlin Wolley (Cornell University) and it’s here. Click the ‘pdf’ button on the right:

Adherence to Personal Resolutions Across Time, Culture, and Goal Domains - Kaitlin Woolley, Laura M. Giurge, Ayelet Fishbach, 2025

Goal setting is only somewhat more common than the failure to follow through on one’s goals. Recognizing the challenge of long-term behavior change, we asked wh...

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09567976251350960

(Subscribers, you’re about to get a powerpoint breaking the study down and explaining it for students, with some suggestions for how they might set better study goals for 2026…)

Portal Talk...

Just a quick reminder for Friday Mindset subscribers — you can still claim 1 free cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire.

Demos are booking up fast and we’ve got no availability next week, so if you’d like to use the offer, please make sure you book your demo before February half-term.

Book a demo using the link below and we’ll include:

• 1 FREE VESPA Questionnaire cycle (up to 100 students)

• Trial access to the Coaching Portal so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students — in real tutor time — when it matters most

Key details

• Questionnaire must be completed by 30 March 2026 (pre-Easter)

• One free cycle per school

• Max 100 students for the free cycle

If you want tutor time to produce more than “good luck everyone”… this is a great moment to try a simple structure that genuinely shifts mindset and behaviour.

Book your demo here:

Newsletter Promotion - Tony Dennis

Book a demo and we’ll include 1 FREE cycle of the VESPA Questionnaire for up to 100 students, plus trial access to the Coaching Portal (limited taster access) so you can test-drive the coaching process with real students — in real tutor time — during the period it matters most.

Something to try...

OK, the Kaitlin Woolley goal-setting study from above, in detail!

The powerpoint takes you through exactly how the study worked - including the questionnaire participants took. This means you could get your kids to reflect on a goal they have, and take the questionnaire themselves. (It’s a simple six-question one which gives you some immediate, very simple feedback to discuss, and introduces the two types of goal.)

And you’ll end with five suggestions for how to make study goals more intrinsically motivating…