Educator vs Carousel
Educator vs Carousel
Carousel is a trusted teacher question-bank tool used by ~4,000 UK schools. Educator is a student daily-habit engine. They solve different problems. Here's the honest side-by-side.
TL;DR: Carousel reduces marking. Educator changes student behaviour. Most schools that add Educator keep Carousel too.
| Feature | Carousel | Educator | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily habit / streak mechanic | ✗ | ✓ | Carousel is a question bank. Educator is a daily-practice engine. |
| Spaced repetition (SM-2 adaptive) | ~ | ✓ | Carousel markets SR as coming soon. Educator has SM-2 live. |
| Adaptive difficulty per student | ✗ | ✓ | Each student's ease factor and interval update each session. |
| Daily question of the day | ✗ | ✓ | |
| Live in-class session (teacher-led) | ~ | ✓ | Carousel has whiteboard mode; Educator has real-time answer tracking. |
| Expert-authored, verified content (not crowdsourced) | ✗ | ✓ | Carousel is crowd-sourced community banks. Educator's cards are authored in-house, sourced, and quality-checked. |
| Community / user-uploaded question banks | ✓ | ✗ | Carousel's core strength. If you need custom banks, this matters. |
| Free-text self-marking | ✓ | ✗ | Carousel's moat. We use structured types (recall, match, cloze) instead. |
| Varied question formats (6 types) | ~ | ✓ | Carousel does MCQ + free-text. We have recall, MCQ, match, true/false, cloze and calculation. |
| Foundation / Higher tier filter | ✗ | ✓ | |
| Multi-board spec coverage per card | ✗ | ✓ | Every Educator card tags which exam boards it applies to. |
| Per-student progress drill-through | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Homework with topic + due date | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Bulk student import (xlsx) | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Print revision packs | ✗ | ✓ | A3 poster + A4 cut-and-fold revision cards in one click. |
| School-wide HoD dashboard | ✗ | ✓ | Cross-class rollup for heads of department at /teach/school. |
| Student rank ladder per subject | ✗ | ✓ | |
| Avatar / character customisation | ✗ | ✓ | |
| No pressure notifications or FOMO timers | ~ | ✓ | Educator's design principles actively exclude anxiety mechanics. |
| One-school flat fee | ✓ | ✓ | Carousel: £1,965+VAT flat for 50+ users (single product). Educator: tier-priced from £400+VAT Department to £2,000+VAT Whole-school, MAT pricing on request. |
| Free tier for schools | ✓ | ✓ | Carousel Silver tier is free. Educator runs a free 4-week pilot per subject. |
Legend: ✓ available · ~ partial · ✗ not available
Where Carousel wins
- ✓Free-text self-marking. Carousel's peer-marking + auto-marking handles extended answers and typed responses. Educator uses structured recall formats only.
- ✓Custom question banks. Teachers upload their own questions or reuse 2,000+ community banks. Educator content is curated and fixed. You can't add your own.
- ✓Community network effect. ~4,000 UK schools. The community question banks are a genuine asset. Educator is newer, with curated content only.
Where Educator wins
- →Students want to open it. Streaks, ranks, characters, daily goals. Carousel has no engagement loop. Students use it when set homework. Educator gets used every day.
- →Adaptive spaced repetition (SM-2). Each card's ease factor and interval updates every session. Carousel is working on SR. We ship it now.
- →Authored & verified, not crowdsourced. Every card is written to the published spec, fully sourced, and quality-checked before it goes live. Carousel's community banks are teacher-uploaded but unverified.
- →Live in-class sessions. Teacher launches a live session; students join from their device; teacher sees a real-time leaderboard. Carousel has whiteboard mode, not the same.
- →School-wide HoD dashboard. Cross-class engagement, accuracy, and struggling cards visible to heads of department in one view.
Why most schools run both
Carousel does what it does well: reduce teacher marking on extended answers and store the department's question banks. Educator does something different: it gets students opening a revision app every day before the teacher has to ask them to.
Think of it like Times Tables Rock Stars alongside your maths scheme of work. The two tools aren't in competition. They serve different moments in the learning cycle.
Try it for four weeks. Free.
One school. Unlimited classes. No card limit. No teacher limit. If your students aren't practising daily by the end of the trial, you owe us nothing.