Tag: support

ShareWell Offers Free Mental Health Support to University Students Nationwide

ShareWell—the first peer-to-peer mental health support platform—is now offering free, unlimited memberships to all university students across the U.S.

With 70% of college students reporting mental health challenges, ShareWell aims to fill critical gaps in care by providing live, virtual peer-led support groups on topics like anxiety, depression, academic pressure, and life transitions. Students can join as many sessions as they want—completely free—by signing up with their university email at www.sharewellnow.com.

It’s a simple way to access community support during what can be some of the most overwhelming years of life.

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April 10, 2025
CoSN2025 Takeaways: Meet the Winners

Honors for edtech leaders across the country are always a highlight of one of edtech’s most influential events of the year. The innovations shared and insights delivered are what drive the best strategies for districts in the months and years to come. Below are some details:

The CoSN Volunteer of the Year Award recognizes the achievements of one CoSN member who has provided exemplary support to the organization over the past year. Mike Daugherty of Chagrin Falls Exempted Village School District (OH) is this year’s winner. Mike has been a tireless volunteer and an invaluable leader in Ohio’s educational technology community. During the pandemic, he served as Chair of the Ohio CoSN chapter and extended his term an extra year to support the group during a critical time. One of his most impactful contributions has been the creation and leadership of a highly successful CETL study group. What began under his leadership during his time as Chair has grown into an annual fall cohort that meets weekly through the end of the year, guiding participants through the CETL framework. Thanks to Mike’s dedication, Ohio now has around 20 new CETLs each year — more than any other state.

More News from eSchool News

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Tags best, COSN, districts, edtech, influential, leaders, support

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April 10, 2025
$Wraparound Support Network Aids College Student Math Completion$

Wraparound Support Network Aids College Student Math Completion

Corequisite educational models are tied to higher pass and completion rates for students compared to remedial education, but ensuring learners are passing college-level courses often requires additional institutional investment.

Middle Georgia State University reimagined its corequisite education model to embed tutors, peer mentors and success coaches in entry-level math courses. Now, students who are falling behind are identified on a weekly basis, allowing for targeted and individualized outreach.

After the first term of the initiative, passing rates grew over 10 percentage points and withdrawals decreased, encouraging the university to scale the intervention to English courses and, starting next fall, STEM courses with high failure—D or F—or withdrawal rates.

What’s the need: Middle Georgia State offers 29 sections of its corequisite math course, Qualitative Reasoning. The course has seen stagnant success rates over the past few years, even though the number of students enrolled in corequisites grew, said Deepa Arora, senior associate provost of student success at Middle Georgia State.

Students who didn’t pass the class were less likely to stay enrolled and progress, prompting institutional leaders to consider new ways to engage these learners.

How it works: The solution was to create a support network of professionals who assist learners.

Faculty members are at the center of the initiative, flagging at-risk learners who are missing goals or failing to submit work.

From there, student success coaches, who are embedded in the course’s learning management system, reach out to those students to share resources, create a success plan and make referrals. Coaches also initiate a follow-up a week later to see if students have completed any action.

Depending on the student’s area of weakness, success coaches funnel them to one of two types of student employee: an embedded tutor or a peer mentor.

Embedded tutors address primarily academic concerns, such as low grades. Tutors attend class sessions, provide content-specific coaching and host review sessions as well as set up appointments for learners who need additional assistance, Arora said.

Corequisite learners who may be missing or not participating in classes are referred to a peer mentor, Arora said. In addition to teaching academic skills, peer mentors focus on a student’s sense of belonging and connection to the institution. They facilitate workshops, provide referrals to other support resources and connect students with classmates.

Both tutors and mentors are paid positions for which students must meet certain qualifications: They need to have passed the relevant course, be enrolled at least part-time and fulfill role-specific training.

Building better: The staffing changes were supported by revenue from tuition increases over the past two years. Faculty buy-in was also essential. “Faculty collaboration and cooperation with the success team was an integral part of the initiative and led to the development of a support ecosystem for the student,” Arora said.

Prior to implementing the new model, faculty members were briefed on the initiative’s design and asked to provide feedback and meet with the success coaches to build relationships.

Faculty didn’t receive any specific training other than guidance on how to identify at-risk students—those missing classes, earning low grades or failing to engage. Campus leaders also encouraged professors to send weekly communication regarding student performance and share related information about content with the success coach assigned to their section, Arora said.

The impact: The initiative succeeded in its goal of improving student pass rates: 73 percent of students who attempted the course in fall 2024 passed, a 14-percentage-point increase from the previous fall’s rate. (Excluding withdrawals, 77 percent of fall 2024 students passed the course.)

One trend the university noted was that the students who did fail were primarily in the online sections, suggesting that improvements to the in-person experiences were moving the needle.

Additionally, the connection between faculty and success coaches broke down institutional silos through ensuring timely identification of barriers and sharing of best practices. Success coaches appreciated being embedded in the learning management system, as it gave them greater insight into where the students needed help.

Support staff also noted increased student use of resources.

What’s next: After the initial positive results, university leaders chose to extend the initiative this term to include all sections of Composition I and its corequisite support courses. “The plan is also to extend this strategy to all sections of Anatomy and Physiology I and II where additional support is needed to improve their success rates,” Arora said.

The university will also invest in additional focus on online courses to close success gaps there.

Do you have an academic intervention that might help others improve student success? Tell us about it.

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April 10, 2025
NSF, NIH Slash Support for Early-Career Scientists

Both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health are slashing funding support for graduate students and early-career researchers as President Donald Trump continues dramatic federal budget cuts.

Since Trump took office in January, the two agencies—which send billions in funding to research universities each year—have stalled grant reviews, fired scores of workers and terminated or flagged hundreds of active grants that conflict with the administration’s ideological goals.

On Tuesday, Nature reported the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program awarded 1,000 fellowships—fewer than half of the record-setting 2,555 fellowship offers it made in 2023, and the second-smallest number of awards since 2008.

Prior to this year, the fellowship program’s stated goal was to “ensure the quality, vitality, and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce,” though the Trump administration has since replaced the word “diversity” with “strength.”

Since 1952, the NSF’s fellowship program has funded more than 75,000 master’s and Ph.D. students pursuing science degrees. Fellows receive five years of funding, which includes a $37,000 annual stipend and the cost of tuition. The fellowships are highly competitive; of the more than 13,000 applicants who apply each year, only about 16 percent typically get an award. While the cuts made it even more competitive this year, a record 3,018 applicants also received “honorable mentions,” which don’t come with an award but can boost a CV nonetheless.

Over the past two weeks, the NIH has also canceled numerous institutional and individual training grants, including many that support scientists from underrepresented communities, according to The Transmitter.

The outlet reported that a chemistry professor at the University of Puerto Rico–Río Piedras Campus received a letter from the NIH terminating funding for the Undergraduate Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement because the award “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”

That justification is now central to a federal lawsuit researchers and advocacy groups filed against the NIH last week, which among other points argues that the Department of Health and Human Services (the NIH’s parent agency) hasn’t yet adopted rules that would allow it to terminate an award for not effectuating agency priorities.

Other terminated NIH training programs, according to The Transmitter, include the Maximizing Access to Research Careers program, which funded undergraduate researchers; the Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Program; the Bridges to the Doctorate program, which trained master’s students; the Initiative for Maximizing Student Development, which supported graduate students; and the Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award, which aided postdoctoral researchers.

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April 10, 2025
Effective academic support requires good data transparency

Academic support for students is an essential component of their academic success. At a time when resources are stretched, it is critical that academic support structures operate as a well-oiled machine, where each component has a clearly defined purpose and operates effectively as a whole.

We previously discussed how personal and pastoral tutoring, provided by academic staff, needs to be supplemented by specialist academic support. A natural next step is to consider what that specialist support could look like.

A nested model

We’ve identified four core facets of effective academic support, namely personal tutoring (advising/coaching/mentoring etc), the development of academic skills and graduate competencies, all supported by relevant student engagement data. The nested model below displays this framework.

We also suggest two prerequisites to the provision of academic support.

Firstly, a student must have access to information related to what academic support entails and how to access this. Secondly, a student’s wellbeing means that they can physically, mentally, emotionally and financially engage with their studies, including academic support opportunities.

Figure 1: Academic support aspects within a student success nested model

Focusing on academic support

Personal tutoring has a central role to play within the curriculum and within academic provision more broadly in enabling student success.

That said, “academic support” comprises much more than a personal tutoring system where students go for generic advice and support.

Rather, academic support is an interconnected system with multiple moving parts tailored within each institution and comprising different academic, professional and third-space stakeholders.

Yet academics remain fundamental to the provision of academic support given their subject matter expertise, industry knowledge and their proximity to students. This is why academics are traditionally personal tutors and historically, this is where the academic support model would have ended. Changes in student needs means the nature of personal tutoring has needed to be increasingly complemented by other forms of academic support.

Skills and competencies

Academic skills practitioners can offer rich insights in terms of how best to shape and deliver academic support.

A broad conception of academic skills that is inclusive of academic literacies, maths, numeracy and stats, study skills, research and information literacy and digital literacy is a key aspect of student academic success. Student acquisition of these skills is complemented by integrated and purposeful involvement of academic skills practitioners across curriculum design, delivery and evaluation.

Given regulatory focus on graduate outcomes, universities are increasingly expected to ensure that academic support prepares students for graduate-level employability or further study upon graduation. Much like academic skills practitioners, this emphasises the need to include careers and employability consultants in the design and delivery of integrated academic support aligned to the development of both transferable and subject-specific graduate competencies.

Engaging data

Data on how students are participating in their learning provides key insights for personal tutors, academic skills practitioners and colleagues working to support the development of graduate competencies.

Platforms such as StREAM by Kortext enable a data-informed approach to working with students to optimise the provision of academic support. This holistic approach to the sharing of data alongside actionable insights further enables successful transition between support teams.

Knowing where the support need is situated means that these limited human and financial resources can be directed to where support is most required – whether delivered on an individual or cohort basis. Moreover, targeted provision can be concentrated at relevant points over the academic year. Using engagement data contributes to efficiency drives through balancing the provision of information and guidance to all students. The evidence shows it’s both required and likely to prove effective.

Academic support is increasingly complicated in terms of how different aspects overlap and interplay within a university’s student success ecosystem. Therefore, when adopting a systems-thinking approach to the design and delivery of academic support, universities must engage key stakeholders, primarily students, academic skills practitioners and personal tutors themselves.

A priority should be ensuring varied roles of academic support providers are clearly defined both individually and in relation to each other.

Similarly, facilitating the sharing of data at the individual student level about the provision of academic support should be prioritised to ensure that communication loops are closed and no students fall between service gaps.

Given that academic support is evolving, we would welcome readers’ views of what additional aspects of academic support are necessary to student success.

To find out more about how StREAM by Kortext can enable data-informed academic support at your institution, why not arrange a StREAM demonstration.

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April 9, 2025
How to Support College Students With Body Image Concerns
Some college students struggle with body image, negatively impacting their academic performance and physical wellness.

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Food and campus dining are important elements of the college experience for many students, whether that’s grabbing a quick coffee on the way to an 8 a.m. class or sharing a meal with friends at the end of a long day. Some learners, however, experience challenges with their eating habits due to negative body image or disordered thinking about food, which can be detrimental to their physical and mental health.

Colleges and universities can create greater awareness for students and staff by supplying resources for physical health and wellness to support student well-being and thriving.

What’s the need: Students with poor body image may feel ashamed, anxious or awkward, which could result in a lack of engagement in social events or classes, or unhealthy dieting and exercise behaviors, according to a study from the University of Alabama.

Social media can increase students’ exposure to negative body images, which can damage mental and physical health. And students who experience food insecurity are more likely to report disordered eating habits.

Campus Dining and Disordered Eating

Addressing harmful eating habits can take place in the classroom or in the dining hall. Some colleges and universities, such as Northwestern University, have made strides to improve the student experience when utilizing campus food services by removing calorie counts next to food items. Read more here.

Healthy body image can also be tied to student retention and graduation. A 2023 survey by United Healthcare Services found that college students who have experienced an eating disorder are more likely to have doubts about graduating on time (81 percent), compared to their peers who didn’t report an eating disorder (19 percent).

While women are more likely to experience negative body perceptions, men also experience disordered eating. Male student athletes, in particular, experience higher rates of eating disorders than their nonathlete peers but are less likely than their female peers to receive support for disordered eating.

Campuswide interventions: Disseminating information across campus can be one way to reach students who may be unaware of offerings or unable to identify their own harmful habits.
- Illinois State University hosts the Body Project, the Body Project: More Than Muscles and the Female Athlete Body Project in collaboration with Student Counseling Services, Health Promotion and Wellness, and the Department of Psychology. The Body Project, a peer-led intervention, addresses female students’ sense of body image, and More Than Muscles supports male-identified learners with a chance to consider how culture and media define the ideal male body. Similarly, the Female Athlete Body Project supports women participating in collegiate athletics and their unique challenges with body image.
- Louisiana State University hosted an event, “Trash Your Insecurities,” which invited students to write down their biggest insecurity and literally throw it in a trash can. Students could then write down what they’re most proud of themselves for, helping promote a better sense of self and positive self-talk. The event helped increase awareness of eating disorders and body image concerns as well as campus resources for these challenges.
- The University of Nevada, Reno, hosts a support group, Nourish and Flourish, that encourages students to bring food to an informal setting to discuss concerns. Group counseling sessions can provide a place of community and support for students struggling with disordered eating or negative body image.
Working with students: As an individual faculty or staff member, practitioners can encourage positive body image with a student by:
- Encouraging them to unfollow social media accounts or influencers who trigger negative body image thoughts or feelings. Research from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, shows that engaging with positive content can improve body image over several weeks. At the same time, exposure to fitness-oriented social media posts can harm women’s self-perceptions, according to researchers from Davidson College.
- When giving compliments, focusing on a student’s performance or personality, as opposed to appearances, can be helpful, according to recommendations from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
- Avoiding use of negative body talk or dieting in the classroom or office, which can encourage students to do the same. Sometimes people engage in negative self-talk without even realizing it, so being self-accepting and self-compassionate can promote positive change.
- Encouraging students to take care of themselves through adequate sleep or regular eating. For colleges that have nutrition services, staff can refer students to experts who can provide healthy eating advice.
Do you have a wellness intervention that might help others promote student success? Tell us about it.
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April 8, 2025
$6 ways to make math more accessible for multilingual learners$

6 ways to make math more accessible for multilingual learners
Key points:
- All students are math language learners, regardless of their home language
- Fostering metacognition and AI integration for ELLs
- How to support multilingual learners in STEM
- For more news on language learners, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching hub
Math isn’t just about numbers. It’s about language, too.

Many math tasks involve reading, writing, speaking, and listening. These language demands can be particularly challenging for students whose primary language is not English.

There are many ways teachers can bridge language barriers for multilingual learners (MLs) while also making math more accessible and engaging for all learners. Here are a few:

1. Introduce and reinforce academic language

Like many disciplines, math has its own language. It has specialized terms–such as numerator, divisor, polynomial, and coefficient–that students may not encounter outside of class. Math also includes everyday words with multiple meanings, such as product, plane, odd, even, square, degree, and mean.

One way to help students build the vocabulary needed for each lesson is to identify and highlight key terms that might be new to them. Write the terms on a whiteboard. Post the terms on math walls. Ask students to record them in math vocabulary notebooks they can reference throughout the year. Conduct a hands-on activity that provides a context for the vocabulary students are learning. Reinforce the terms by asking students to draw pictures of them in their notebooks or use them in conversations during group work.

Helping students learn to speak math proficiently today will pay dividends (another word with multiple meanings!) for years to come.

2. Incorporate visual aids

Visuals and multimedia improve MLs’ English language acquisition and engagement. Picture cards, for example, are a helpful tool for building students’ vocabulary skills in group, paired, or independent work. Many digital platforms include ready-made online cards as well as resources for creating picture cards and worksheets.

Visual aids also help MLs comprehend and remember content. Aids such as photographs, videos, animations, drawings, diagrams, charts, and graphs help make abstract ideas concrete. They connect concepts to the everyday world and students’ experiences and prior knowledge, which helps foster understanding.

Even physical actions such as hand gestures, modeling the use of a tool, or displaying work samples alongside verbal explanations and instructions can give students the clarity needed to tackle math tasks.

3. Utilize digital tools

A key benefit of digital math tools is that they make math feel approachable. Many MLs may feel more comfortable with digital math platforms because they can practice independently without worrying about taking extra time or giving the wrong answer in front of their peers.

Digital platforms also offer embedded language supports and accessibility features for diverse learners. Features like text-to-speech, adjustable speaking rates, digital glossaries, and closed captioning improve math comprehension and strengthen literacy skills.

4. Encourage hands-on learning

Hands-on learning makes math come alive. Math manipulatives allow MLs to “touch” math, deepening their understanding. Both physical and digital manipulatives–such as pattern blocks, dice, spinners, base ten blocks, and algebra tiles–enable students to explore and interact with mathematical ideas and discover the wonders of math in the world around them.

Many lesson models, inquiry-based investigations, hands-on explorations and activities, and simulations also help students connect abstract concepts and real-life scenarios.

PhET sims, for example, create a game-like environment where students learn math through exploration and discovery. In addition to addressing math concepts and applications, these free simulations offer language translations and inclusive features such as voicing and interactive descriptions.

Whether students do math by manipulating materials in their hands or on their devices, hands-on explorations encourage students to experiment, make predictions, and find solutions through trial and error. This not only fosters critical thinking but also helps build confidence and perseverance.

5. Use students’ home language as a support

Research suggests that students’ home languages can also be educational resources.

In U.S. public schools, Spanish is the most commonly reported home language of students learning English. More than 75 percent of English learners speak Spanish at home. To help schools incorporate students’ home language in the classroom, some digital platforms offer curriculum content and supports in both English and Spanish. Some even provide the option to toggle from English to Spanish with the click of a button.

In addition, artificial intelligence and online translation tools can translate lesson materials into multiple languages.

6. Create verbal scaffolds

To respond to math questions, MLs have to figure out the answers and how to phrase their responses in English. Verbal scaffolds such as sentence frames and sentence stems can lighten the cognitive load by giving students a starting point for answering questions or expressing their ideas. This way, students can focus on the lesson content rather than having to spend extra mental energy figuring out how to word their answers.

Sentence frames are often helpful for students with a beginning level of English proficiency.
- A square has sides.
- An isosceles triangle has at least equal angles.
Sentence stems (a.k.a. sentence starters) help students get their thoughts going so they can give an answer or participate in a discussion.
- The pattern I noticed was .
- My answer is . I figured it out by .
Whether online or on paper, these fill-in-the-blank phrases and sentences help students explain their thinking orally or in writing. These scaffolds also support academic language development by showing key terms in context and providing opportunities to use new vocabulary words.

Making math welcoming for all

All students are math language learners. Regardless of their home language, every student should feel like their math classroom is a place to learn, participate, contribute, and grow. With the right strategies and tools, teachers can effectively support MLs while maintaining the rigor of grade-level content and making math more accessible and engaging for all.

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April 4, 2025
The UPP Foundation is launching a new inquiry into widening participation to support the government’s opportunity mission

Twenty-five years on from Blair’s target for 50 per cent of young people to go to higher education, the Labour Party set out a new ambition to “break down barriers to opportunity.”

The opportunity mission articulates a multi-generational challenge: to make sure that children and young people can get on, no matter what their background; to change Britain so that a child’s future earnings are no longer limited by those of their parents; and to make Britain one of the fairest countries in the OECD. It is a fundamentally important challenge, and one that will be years in the undertaking.

Widening participation in higher education plays a huge part in this mission, and it is for that reason that the UPP Foundation has announced a major new inquiry into the future of widening participation and student success. We have launched this inquiry by publishing a short “state of the nation” summary of the key issues in 2025. Because while success in the opportunity mission would transform the shape of British society, Labour is all too aware of the differences between the optimism of Blair’s famous 50 per cent pledge and the markedly different political and economic circumstances Keir Starmer’s government finds itself in now.

A changed landscape

Universities and schools face significant headwinds when it comes to dismantling the gaps students face when looking to get in and get on. The HE sector is facing well-publicised and unprecedented financial challenges, with the recent rise in fees doing nothing to alleviate pressure amid rising costs. With institutions contemplating restructuring moves and the government no closer to outlining a solution for widespread mounting deficits amid heavy fiscal weather, it is hard to see universities or the government finding much bandwidth for widening participation in the near future.

There is also no equivalent target or metric that captures the challenge in quite the same way as Blair’s. This is understandable. Part of the reason no similar metric presents itself is because widening participation is now seen as multidimensional: not just focused on access to university, but also continuation rates, graduate outcomes, and less easily quantifiable measures of success, such as student belonging and participation in the immersive elements of the student experience.

With the number of commuter students rising to reflect different learning patterns and pathways in a diverse student population, student living arrangements are also a major part of this puzzle. As the Secretary of State alluded to prior to the general election in an address to Universities UK, modern widening participation must reach out to more of those coming from nontraditional backgrounds, and those pursuing non-linear pathways through higher education.

A wider view of widening participation means we need a more nuanced understanding of how access to university varies along socioeconomic, geographical and other demographic lines. As today’s report outlines, the difference in progression rates to higher education between students eligible for free school meals and their peers has widened to 20.8 per cent – the highest on record. Young people in London are significantly more likely to progress to higher education than their counterparts in the North East. The continuation gap between students from the most and least advantaged backgrounds now sits at 9.4 percentage points, having increased from 7.5 in 2016–17. As one of many charities operating in this space, we come face-to-face with the scale and scope of this disadvantage gap time and again. Equality of opportunity is still some way off.

As well as this, some are schools struggling to do as much as others to support access to HE. Polling in our new report finds that 75 per cent of teachers in London expect at least half of their class to progress to higher education, compared to just 45 per cent in the North West and Yorkshire and the North East. Similarly, 75 per cent of teachers in Ofsted Outstanding schools thought that more than half their class would progress to HE, compared to just 35 per cent in schools rated as Requires Improvement or Inadequate.

Although the Secretary of State said in a letter to heads of institution in November 2024 that expanding access and improving outcomes for disadvantaged students was her top reform priority in HE, the long list of challenges facing this government poses the risk that widening participation becomes a footnote to the geopolitical crisis.

What we’re doing

Despite the difficult environment facing both universities and the government, we think this agenda is too important to be put on the back burner. We hope our inquiry will help to establish new collective goals for widening participation and student success for the years ahead.

The current moment provides a significant opportunity to interrogate the ways in which access and participation, student finance, student experience on campus, careers guidance, and student belonging intersect. It is in the context of this opportunity that the UPP Foundation, supported by Public First, is launching this inquiry, which aims to establish a new mission for widening participation.

Following the introductory paper, we will publish two investigations, the first focusing on the persistent widening participation problems latent in “cold spot” areas of England, and the second exploring how the university experience differs based on students’ living arrangements and economic backgrounds, with poorer students often receiving a secondary experience that contributes to lower continuation and completion rates. Cumulatively, they will shed light on what meaningful widening participation really looks like to those who need it most, and what levers can be pulled to realise this vision.

This inquiry comes at a crucial moment. We want to help the sector, the Office for Students and the government by setting out a series of evidence-based goals, recommendations and policies which could help make the broader vision a reality, while recognising “the art of the possible” in an era of fiscal restraint. Through these recommendations we hope to see the rhetoric of the opportunity mission and the Secretary of State start to become reality.

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April 3, 2025
Almost 2,000 Schools and Districts Choose Lexia® English Language Development™ to Support Emergent Bilingual Students’ English Language Acquisition

BOSTON (March 31, 2025) – In recent months, almost 2,000 schools and districts have purchased or renewed licenses for Lexia English Language Development (Lexia English) from Lexia, a Cambium Learning Group brand. Using powerful speech recognition technology, the program supports students in grades K-6 to build their linguistic confidence in academic English.

“More than 162,000 students and 77,000 educators at 7,400 schools used the program during the 2024 school year. In addition, those students practiced academic conversations 4.3 million times in the program,” said Lexia President, Nick Gaehde. “The numbers show just how much students and educators have needed access to a culturally responsive language learning solution.”

One of those educators who used the program is Lynmara Colón, the director of Student Opportunity and Multilingual Services at Prince William County Schools in Virginia. After a pilot, the district has allowed individual middle and elementary schools to purchase Lexia English during the 2024-2025 school year. Prince William County Schools serves more than 20,000 English learners who speak 140 languages. “We are the 10th most diverse district in the nation,” Colón said. “But when I try to find tools for diverse students, there’s not a lot that meets the specific needs of the student population we serve.”

Colón noted that the program had boosted student growth to the point of reducing her worries about providing staff with a high-quality tool focused on helping Emergent Bilingual students. She expressed appreciation for the way the program helps her forecast and make sense of language acquisition data. “With Lexia, I can have visibility into how they’re doing with language comprehension,” she said. “I always know to expect the best from our Lexia partners. I have high expectations, and they never disappoint.”

Lexia English’s approach to English language learning is to empower emergent bilinguals by honoring their heritage languages and offering culturally responsive, adaptive learning pathways to foster academic and linguistic growth. Seventeen characters with diverse backgrounds help students practice speaking skills by engaging with content in academic subjects such as math, science, social studies, and general knowledge.

Gaehde concluded, “With Lexia English, educators can celebrate multilingualism in the classroom, providing students with the tools to succeed in both English language development and overall academic achievement.”

About Lexia

Lexia®, a Cambium Learning® Group brand, is transforming literacy education, driving change in 1 of every 3 school districts across the United States. For more than 40 years, Lexia has been a thought leader in literacy education, delivering award-winning, research-based solutions grounded in the science of reading. With a full spectrum of offerings, including professional learning, curriculum, and embedded assessment tools, Lexia provides educators with Structured Literacy solutions that are proven effective and designed to drive meaningful literacy outcomes. By empowering educators with unparalleled ease of use and the knowledge and tools they need, Lexia helps more students unlock their potential to read, write, and speak with confidence. For more information, visit lexialearning.com.

About Cambium Learning Group

Cambium Learning Group is the education essentials company, providing award-winning education technology and services for K-12 educators and students. With an intentional collection of respected global brands, Cambium serves as a leader, helping millions of educators and students feel more seen, valued, and supported every day. In everything it does, the company focuses on the elements that are most essential to the success of education, delivering simpler, more certain solutions that make a meaningful difference right now.

To learn more, visit www.cambiumlearning.com or follow Cambium on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X. The Cambium family of brands includes: Cambium Assessment®, Lexia®, Learning A-Z®, ExploreLearning®, and Time4Learning®.

eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.

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April 1, 2025
Teachers need support to understand what’s needed in the UCAS personal statement
Our recent paper found substantial misalignment between state-school teachers and university admissions staff on what makes a high-quality UCAS personal statement.

In our study, 409 state school teachers were presented with ten paragraphs from UCAS personal statements and asked to select between two pieces of feedback. One ‘correct’ feedback was provided by an admissions tutor, and the one ‘incorrect’ feedback was supplied by another teacher. These paragraphs and feedback were all real-world examples derived from Steven Jones’ (2016) study, used as part of Causeway Education’s pre-training programme for state school teachers.

We found:
- There was significant misalignment between teachers and admissions staff. In only 56.5% of cases did teachers select the ‘correct’ feedback response.
- There are a number of pervasive myths regarding the UCAS personal statement. Teachers had a dual tendency to:
1. Advise for the incorporation of personal content that aimed to demonstrate a holistic view of the student rather than course-related competencies; and
2. Suggest reducing content that demonstrated course-related knowledge and skills.
To give one example, teachers were presented with the paragraph below and asked to choose between two pieces of feedback: (1) Strong reasons backed up by detailed examples; and (2) Too much detail; doesn’t give a sense of the student as an individual. The first of these is from an admissions tutor and the second from a teacher in Jones’ (2016) work.

My main reason for wanting to study Japanese is because I enjoy studying complex grammar rules to see how languages come together. This is why I chose to undertake Latin at A-Level as I enjoy translating pieces of complex texts. Analysing writers techniques in presenting ideas and characters is also interesting, in particular how Tacitus in Annals I, presents Tiberius as an unsuitable emperor by often comparing him to his father Augustus, an emperor who was deemed ‘an upholder of moral justice’.

In 58.4% of cases teachers selected the first ‘correct’ answer, and 41.6% selected the ‘incorrect’ second answer.

These findings should not be interpreted as a criticism of teachers. In the context of studies finding a considerable lack of transparency on how universities use the UCAS personal statement (Fryer et al., 2024), the burden of responsibility for misalignment falls primarily on universities. Without clear and transparent guidance, this misalignment between teachers and admissions staff is inevitable.

There is an important opportunity to address this situation, as many universities will currently be in the process of updating their public-facing guidance in response to the upcoming UCAS personal statement reform. The shift to three short questions for the 2025-26 application cycle and the corresponding need to update guidance present universities with an opportunity to address and counter the misalignments noted in our paper.

To support this goal, our paper contains a table of key implications (Table 5, pp.14-15), which can be downloaded directly from this link.

We hope this is of practical use to admissions staff in updating and developing guidance on the UCAS personal statement. We contend that this new guidance, alongside transparent explanations of how the personal statement is used in selection decisions, is crucial to enable UCAS’s reform to widen participation and address inequalities.

This blog is based on a paper ‘Investigating the alignment of teachers and admissions professionals on UCAS personal statements’ by Tom Fryer, Anna Burchfiel, Matt Griffin, Sam Holmes and Steven Jones. Due to its time-sensitive nature, the paper has been published as a preprint, and therefore has not yet been subject to peer-review.

The table summarising the implications for public-facing guidance is available for download here.
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April 1, 2025