For schools

Homework

Teachers can set homework assignments that target specific topics, or individual subtopics within them. Students complete them through the normal practice flow, with no separate app or login. The first time a student completes an assignment they automatically earn a streak freeze as a reward for engaging with the work.

How homework works

Homework in Educator is a filtered practice session, assigned by the teacher and surfaced on the student dashboard as a dedicated card. There is no separate homework portal. Students practise in exactly the same interface they use every day, just with the card pool narrowed to what you set, which can be whole topics or named subtopics within them.

Teacher publishes an assignment. From the class page, the teacher picks topics or subtopics and sets a due date. The assignment is published immediately, and every student in the class gets an email about it.
Assignment card appears on the student dashboard. Students see a dedicated card showing the card count, the topics, and the due date. It stays on the dashboard until the teacher archives it. Passing the due date does not remove it: the card switches to a red Homework overdue treatment and stays put, so work that is late is still one tap away.
Student taps the assignment and practises. Tapping the card launches a practice session - but unlike ordinary practice, every student in the class works through the exact same batch of questions. The order those questions are served in still adapts to each student (cards they skipped or got wrong first, then unseen cards, then cards due for review), but the question set itself is fixed. That means you can go through the assignment with the whole class afterwards, or print it, and know it matches exactly what every student saw.
First completion earns a streak freeze. When the student finishes the session, the completion is recorded and they receive a confirmation on screen. If this is their first completion of this assignment, +1 streak freeze is automatically credited to their account.

One freeze per assignment. If a student completes the same assignment again (for example, by revisiting the topic later in their own practice), the extra session earns XP as normal but does not award another streak freeze. The freeze is a one-time reward for engaging with the set task.

Setting homework (teacher view)

From your class page, click Set homework. This opens the homework setup page. The process takes under a minute.

Open the class page from Class in the top nav and select the class you want to set work for.
Click Set homework. You land on the homework setup page showing all topics available for that class's subject and exam board.
Select topics, or drill into subtopics. The picker is a collapsible tree. Tick a whole topic (for example, “Enzymes”), bundle several for a broader revision sweep, or expand a topic and tick only the subtopics you have actually taught. Ticking some subtopics but not others scopes the assignment to exactly those, which is how you set homework on the single sub-unit covered this week rather than the whole topic. As you tick, the form tells you how many cards are available across your selection, and warns you if that is fewer than the card count you asked for. Two card types never go into homework: match-pairs cards, and the Beta Mark it (evaluate) cards, which only run in Mark it mode. They are left out of the picker's counts too, so a topic made up mostly of extended-response practice can show fewer cards than you expect.
Set the card count using the slider, between 5 and 50 cards, default 20. This is the number of cards the student will work through when they complete the assignment.
Set a due date. The student sees “Due Fri 8 May” on their dashboard. A due date is required, and the form defaults to next Friday.
Click Set homework. The assignment appears on every enrolled student's dashboard immediately, and the email goes out at the same moment.

Every student gets an email. Publishing an assignment sends a message to each student in the class, from hello@educator-labs.com, headed “New [subject] homework, due [day]”. It names the topics and card count and links straight into the assignment, so a student who taps it in their inbox lands on the right session. This is separate from the push nudge described below, which fires later and only to students who have not started. Students imported without an email address are given an internal placeholder one, and those are skipped rather than bounced. No teacher action is needed either way.

Paused subjects can't take homework. If the class's subject is paused (its trial or subscription has ended, or it was never licensed), the form refuses to publish and tells you the subject is paused, because students could not open the session. Pilot schools are never paused. See School setup for licensing.

One active assignment at a time. Each class can have one active homework at a time. Setting a new assignment replaces the current one on students' dashboards. Past completion records are preserved: you can still review who completed the previous assignment from the class page.

Tip: align assignments with what you taught that week. Students can only practise cards from topics their class has access to, so if you have restricted the class to a term-by-term topic filter, only those topics appear in the assignment picker.

Printable worksheet

Every assignment has a 🖨 Print worksheet link on its detail page. It renders the same fixed question set as a printable sheet, with an answer key on the last page. This exists for students whose parents have not consented to the app: they can still do the homework on paper, marked against the key, while everyone else works through it on screen.

Editing the question pool

Each assignment has a tick-list of the individual questions in its fixed set. Unticking a question removes it for every student, not just your own view - useful if you spot a card that's ambiguous or already covered elsewhere. Ticks save as you change them, for the class owner or an admin. Heads of Department, and anyone viewing an archived assignment, see the same list read-only.

Student experience

From the student's point of view, a homework assignment is a single card on their dashboard: easy to spot, easy to start, and completed entirely within the normal practice interface.

The assignment card on the dashboard

Each homework assignment displays as a card with the card count, the assigned topics, and the due date (“Homework · due Fri 8 May”). Once the date passes the card turns red and reads Homework overdue, which is the one place the product raises its voice. A student who joined the class after the due date never sees that treatment: their card says set before you joined instead, so nobody is told off for work that was never theirs.

Completing the assignment

Tapping the assignment card launches a practice session filtered to the assigned topics or subtopics. The session length is the card count the teacher set for the assignment (default 20), and the questions themselves are a fixed batch - the same set for every student in the class, chosen once when the homework is published. What does vary per student is the order those questions are served in: cards the student skipped or got wrong come first, then cards they have never seen, then cards due for review. A student can also reach the same session from the link in the homework-set email rather than the dashboard card - both routes count as a completion.

Completion confirmation

When the session ends, the done screen shows the usual XP earned, streak status, and a specific confirmation that the homework assignment has been logged. If this was their first completion of that assignment, the screen also shows the streak freeze award, a small, positive acknowledgement that doing the set work carries a tangible benefit.

The assignment card remains on the dashboard until the teacher archives it, so a student who completes early can still re-visit the topic through their own practice. They just won't earn another freeze for it.

No new login or interface to learn. Students access homework through the same dashboard they already use every day. There is nothing additional to install, no separate homework portal, and no second account. This is deliberate: reducing friction is the single biggest factor in whether students actually complete set work.

Tracking completions

The class page shows a live completion summary for every active homework assignment. You can see at a glance how many students have done the work and when each individual completed it, without having to collect paper or chase emails.

The Your class this week card at the top of the class page also surfaces a homework completion percentage for the week (alongside participation and accuracy) whenever homework has been set, with a Set homework link beside it, so you can read the headline figure and set the next assignment in one place. See School setup for the full week-view card.

Completion roster: Click any assignment on the class page to open its detail view. The class roster is split into two lists: the students who have completed it, and a Not done yet (N) list below. Each outstanding student is marked Pending, or Overdue with a red chip once the due date has passed.
Score, accuracy and timestamp: A completed entry shows how long ago the student finished, plus their score for that session as correct-out-of-seen and an accuracy percentage, colour-coded green above 80% and red below 50%. So the roster tells you not only who did the work but who found it hard. If a student completed the assignment more than once, only the first completion counts; later sessions appear in their session history but do not change the homework record.
Overdue assignments: When an assignment passes its due date with students still to complete it, a red N overdue chip appears on that class's card on the Class page (/teach), not on your dashboard. Open the class, then the homework, to see exactly which students have not completed it by name.
Push nudge: Students who have not completed the assignment and have not had any practice session in the last 24 hours receive a single automatic push notification 24–48 hours before the deadline. This only reaches students who have push notifications turned on: it skips anyone without a push subscription, and on iPhone that means the student needs to have installed Educator to their home screen first. The nudge fires once per assignment per student and requires no teacher action.
Before-lesson check: The completion list is up to date every time you load the page. Opening the class page the morning before a lesson gives you an accurate picture of who has prepared, useful for deciding whether to spend lesson time recapping or moving forward.

Tip: view completions the morning before the lesson rather than the evening after you set the work. Students typically do homework in the 24 hours before the deadline, not immediately after you publish. Checking early means you have time to adjust your lesson plan if a large proportion of the class hasn't engaged yet.

Streak freeze mechanic

A streak freeze is a buffer that protects a student's streak on a day they miss their daily practice session. It is completely automatic: students never need to activate it manually or decide when to use it.

How freezes work

If a student does not complete any session on a given day (any mode counts, Study included) and they have at least one freeze available, the missed day is covered automatically: the freeze is spent when they next finish a session, and their streak carries on instead of starting again at day 1. The freeze is gone after that: it protected exactly one missed day.

Students can hold up to 5 freezes in reserve. Each one protects one missed day, so two freezes cover two consecutive missed days, and so on. A reserve only helps if it covers the whole gap: a student with two freezes who misses three days loses the streak (it starts again at day 1) but keeps both freezes. The done screen then says “New streak started today”. The freeze count is visible on the student's profile page.

Earning freezes via homework

Homework is the primary way school students earn streak freezes. Completing a teacher-set assignment for the first time grants +1 freeze. This creates a direct, positive link between doing homework and protecting your revision habit: students who do set work are more resilient to the occasional missed session at the weekend or during a busy period.

Because the freeze is only earned on first completion, a student who does several homework assignments over a half-term can build up a small reserve without any additional effort beyond the work they would be doing anyway.

Freezes for individual (non-school) accounts

During their 7-day trial, individual accounts earn streak freezes the same way, and Pro individuals keep earning them afterwards. Once the trial ends, free individual accounts can no longer earn freezes (homework included). Freezes are capped at 5 on every account, so even a Pro subscriber can lose a streak after enough consecutive missed days.

School students: Earn freezes by completing teacher-set homework assignments (first completion only), plus one for every 7-day streak milestone. No subscription required: the freeze is a built-in incentive for doing the work.
Individual free accounts: Earn freezes only during the 7-day trial (homework completion or the 7-day streak milestone). After the trial ends, free accounts can no longer earn freezes.
Individual Pro accounts: Keep earning streak freezes (first homework completion + every 7-day milestone), capped at 5 held (£50/year or £6/month). A missed day spends one automatically, but with the 5-freeze cap, a streak can still end after more consecutive misses than the freezes held.

Note: streak freezes are framed positively for students: “Streak protected” rather than “Streak at risk,” and a reset reads as “New streak started today” rather than as a loss. The mechanic is designed to reduce anxiety around missed days, not to create FOMO. Students see their freeze count on their profile but are not notified when a freeze is about to run out.

Tips for teachers

Homework works best when it reinforces what students have recently studied rather than introducing new material. A few patterns that work well in practice:

Align topics to your teaching sequence. Set homework on the topic you covered in that week's lesson. Students who are seeing the cards immediately after classroom instruction consolidate faster than students practising topics they haven't encountered yet.
Use deadlines as a nudge, not a threat. Setting a deadline for the night before the next lesson creates a clear expectation without being punitive. The app shows the deadline in a neutral, informational way; it does not send pressure notifications to students.
Check completions the morning before the lesson. A quick look at the completion roster tells you who has prepared. If fewer than half the class have done the work, it may be worth spending five minutes recapping the topic in the lesson before moving on. If most students have done it, you can skip straight to the harder material.
Bundle related topics for revision weeks. In the weeks leading up to an assessment, set a multi-topic assignment covering the whole unit. Students will get an adaptively ordered session across all the relevant material rather than having to navigate the topic picker themselves.
Let the streak freeze do the motivational work. You don't need to sell the homework: students understand that completing it protects their streak, which is a reward they care about. The incentive is built in. Your job is just to set the topic and check the results.
Archive old assignments. Once a deadline has passed, the assignment remains visible but marked overdue. Use the Archive button on the homework detail page to remove the banner from students' dashboards. Past completions remain on record; archiving only hides the active prompt.

Tip: during a four-week pilot, setting three or four topic-aligned assignments gives you concrete completion data to share, which is more persuasive than anecdotal feedback when making the case to continue. The completion report shows exactly who engaged and when.

School setup: creating classes, adding students, managing teachers, and licensing
Practice: how sessions work, card types, practice modes, XP, and streaks
Profile & streak freezes: where students can see their freeze count, streak history, and account settings