Smart Revise does not predict or report the grade a student might achieve in an examination. There are simply too many variables that can influence exam performance, and we do not want to risk giving students or teachers a misleading impression of potential outcomes. Instead, Smart Revise measures and reports a student's progress through the course content, showing how much content they have encountered and how successfully they are answering questions over time.
If you are looking to match a student flight path to their target grade, we advise taking a simple approach guided by the top of each grade boundary with the minimum set 20% lower.
GCSE:
9 = aspiration 94%, minimum 74%
8 = aspiration 88%, minimum 68%
7 = aspiration 82%, minimum 62%
6 = aspiration 77%, minimum 57%
5 = aspiration 67%, minimum 47%
4 = aspiration 57%, minimum 37%
3 = aspiration 48%, minimum 28%
2 = aspiration 34%, minimum 14%
1 = aspiration 21%, minimum 1%
A level:
A* = aspiration 90%, minimum 70%
A = aspiration 80%, minimum 60%
B = aspiration 70%, minimum 50%
C = aspiration 60%, minimum 40%
D = aspiration 50%, minimum 30%
E = aspiration 40%, minimum 20%
There is a clear positive relationship between success in Smart Revise and success in examinations. In general, students who spend more time revising, answer more questions, and engage consistently with the platform are likely to achieve better exam results. However, Smart Revise progress should not be interpreted as an exam percentage or grade. For example, 60% progress in Smart Revise is not equivalent to achieving 60% in a formal examination. The two measures assess different things and are calculated in different ways.
For this reason, flight paths should be viewed primarily as indicators of:
- Student engagement with Smart Revise.
- The amount of content a student has covered.
- The quality of their responses.
- Their growing confidence and retention of knowledge.
Why Smart Revise and grade boundaries are different
Smart Revise is designed around the pedagogy of spaced retrieval practice and beating the forgetting curve. Students regularly revisit the same questions, helping to strengthen long-term recall. The platform intentionally prioritises questions that students answer incorrectly or less confidently, giving them multiple opportunities to improve. As a result, students are often able to correct mistakes and strengthen their understanding over time.
Because of this adaptive approach, we would generally expect students to perform better within Smart Revise than they might in a one-off examination taken under exam conditions. Comparing Smart Revise progress with exam grade boundaries is therefore not really meaningful. Exam grades are based on the number of marks achieved in a formal assessment, whereas Smart Revise measures progress, question completion, confidence and knowledge retention.
If you want a more realistic indication of how students are performing against examination standards, we recommend setting a Task within Smart Revise and applying grade boundaries to those results.
Even then, some caution is needed. Unless the task has been specifically configured to mirror the structure, question types and mark distribution of a real examination paper using the Task experience settings, the result should still be viewed as an approximation rather than a precise predictor of exam performance.
Understanding Quiz, Terms and Advance
Different Smart Revise activities provide different levels of insight into exam readiness:
Quiz
- Multiple-choice questions only.
- Useful for checking knowledge and recall.
- A score of 70% in Quiz mode is not equivalent to 70% in an examination or a particular grade.
Terms
- Focuses on definitions and key terminology only.
- Typically assesses knowledge that would be worth only 1-2 marks per question in an exam.
- Assessing 70% of terms as green would not translate directly into a grade because it represents only a small part of overall exam performance
Advance
- Includes more demanding and exam-style responses.
- Provides a more realistic indication of student understanding.
- Becomes more reliable once students have attempted a substantial number of questions.
The purpose of Smart Revise
The "smart" algorithms within Smart Revise are designed to support long-term learning rather than generate grades. Students are encouraged to revisit weak areas, improve previous answers and build confidence over time. As students are given opportunities to retry questions and learn from mistakes, their performance within Smart Revise will naturally improve. This is by design. The ultimate goal of Smart Revise is not to predict examination results, but to help students develop stronger knowledge retention and make effective revision a continuous part of learning throughout the course.