The familiarity of teaching the same group of students can often lead to pleas for effort and motivation falling on deaf ears. Sometimes it can seem like you need a loud hailer to get their attention.

This is no problem for David Hyner, lead speaker for Stretch Development, who challenges students to behave like rhinos rather than cows – as suggested in the book “rhinoceros success” by Scott Alexander. Rhinos see what they want and go for it, whereas cows procrastinate and breed mediocrity.

A primary school that has been in Special Measures since January 2012 is now reaping the benefits from introducing the Education in Human Values programme.

The school has 9 core values that are the cornerstones of its ethos and form the basis of the collective worship timetable. The EHV materials have been used to supplement them as the 5 human values of truth, peace, love, right conduct and non-violence, which children remember on one hand and which form a framework for the programme, are almost the same as the school's values. Staff found the EHV materials were easily adapted to fit with both the school’s weekly and termly themes.

Apricot Learning Online kicks-off 2013 with a rave review from their first external QA monitoring visit.

"Commitment to student progress, care for student welfare, tight organisation and imaginative approaches to learning characterise Apricot. It is led by dedicated professionals who love what they do and are proud of what they are achieving. Learners with Apricot get a very good deal!" stated Warwickshire LEA, last December.

Young people across Surrey are being engaged and inspired about their futures with more than 35,000 teenagers using the county's new online careers information service to plan their next move.

All young people between the ages of 13 and 19-years-old in Surrey have free access to U-Explore, the online careers and employability platform dedicated to inspiring students about their futures and placing them in control of their own progression. This service is part of Surrey County Council's Youth Engagement Contract.

Last week, over 90,000 students used Show My Homework to hand in their homework on time. 11,000 teachers used it to track and monitor their students' work online.

Show My Homework was founded in 2010 by former Assistant Head Naimish Gohil. Today, Show My Homework leads the way in helping primary and secondary schools track and monitor homework online.

Teachers login and create homework for their class, which appears on their simple homework calendar. Students can then access their homework at any time via the web or their mobile phone.

U-Explore's careers and employability platform has been named as a key supporting tool in a recent research report that looks at how local authorities have supported schools with careers guidance.

'Hidden talents: Examples of transition of careers guidance from local authorities to schools' is published by the Local Government Association (LGA) and National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), and collates case study examples from eight local authorities across England of how they are supporting schools to undertake their new duty, which came into effect from September 2012, to provide independent and impartial careers guidance to young people in their school.

Homewood School and Sixth Form Centre is a school that prides itself on being at the forefront of the personalised learning agenda. They have an accelerated timetable at both key stages, and their curriculum allows students to sit examinations when they are ready to take them rather than by a fixed age.

To support and accelerate students' learning further, they have recently announced a new digital curriculum partnership with LearnersCloud. Their ambition is to raise student engagement, motivation and performance with the support of LearnersCloud's GCSE resources.

SAM Learning, the global online study platform, has released independent research which shows that pupils can improve their GCSE results by at least one grade in up to two GCSE subjects. And, for pupils on free school meals, the improvements can be even greater. SAM’s "Impact of eLearning: Independent Research", led by Dr Mike Treadaway from the Fischer Family Trust, monitored 258,599 Year 11 students over two years. It found that SAM Learning helped improve grades by more than twice the national average.

The Fischer Family Trust, recognised as an expert in value added analysis, was commissioned by SAM Learning to evaluate students' progress between Key Stages 2 and 4. It did this by comparing their GCSE results against what might have been expected on the basis of their key stage 2 attainment. The researchers took into account gender, ethnicity and free school meal entitlement and used the Capped Points Score measure (used by the Department for Education) so that their performance could be measured against their counterparts nationally.

The success of two Lancashire Short Stay Schools (PRUs) demonstrates the importance of effective monitoring and analysis of pupil behaviour. The Oswaldtwistle School and Shaftesbury House School are short stay schools for pupils displaying challenging behaviour.

Oswaldtwistle is a short stay school for pupils temporarily removed from mainstream education. It can accommodate up to 65 pupils at a time. Head teacher Mark Bocker introduced the IT-based monitoring system IRIS at The Oswaldtwistle School to facilitate a change of emphasis to the overall behaviour management strategy in the school. Shifting to a rewards-based approach allowed Bocker to focus the daily staff de-briefing on reinforcing positive behaviours and sharing good practice, rather than discussing negative behaviour.

Education Through Expeditions have recently received Royal patronage from HRH The Prince Of Wales, for their Arctic Jubilee Polar Fun Days.

Earlier this year, Polar Explorer Dr Antony Jinman and Olympic Torch bearer Oli Milroy sent HM The Queen a loyal greeting from the world's most remote Diamond Jubilee tea party, high up in the Arctic.

She responded saying: "I send my grateful thanks to the team members of the Arctic Jubilee Expedition 2012 for their kind message of loyal greetings, sent on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of my accession to the throne. In return please accept my good wishes for a most memorable and successful Diamond Jubilee Expedition," The Queen.