BRAIN power has been helping students expand their minds in an innovative project designed to boost learning techniques.

GCSE students at Darlington School of Mathematics and Science (DSMS) explored a variety of memory skills to help them revise more efficiently at a day-long workshop led by mind mentors from the UK’s leading study skills provider Learning Performance.

DSMS special educational needs teacher Sarah Teasdale said: “We have been working with Learning Performance for a number of years and it really makes a difference to students’ confidence and their ability to train their minds to retain information.

“They have been really focused learning memory tricks, which help link memory to learning through rhyming, image chains and visual triggers, and the results of these workshops really showed in our exceptional GCSE results last summer.

“At DSMS we constantly engage our students with new and innovative ways of learning and hopefully our record-breaking results will continue to improve again year on year.”

Now in the top ten per cent of schools nationally, DSMS celebrated its most successful exam results performance in 2012 placing it as the third best in Darlington and the most improved.

Mind mentor Mohammed Nawaz said: “The students have been absolutely fantastic. They have been focused, full of character and have really taken on board all of the brain power skills we have been showing them.

“By expanding their minds students take on a personal responsibility for their learning which equips them with lifelong learning skills helping them to realise their full potential and perform at their best, especially during exam time.”

Student Hadzera Gherbi, 15, of Darlington, added: “I thought I had a good memory before today but now it’s even better.

“We’ve been learning the most effective ways to revise by using techniques for specific exams and I think it will really help when it comes to taking my GCSEs next year.”