Core features
Leaderboards & leagues
Educator has two separate leaderboard systems: one for school accounts and one for individual learners. They are designed for different audiences and governed by different privacy rules. The league tier system sits on top of the individual leaderboard and gives solo learners a long-term progression ladder to climb.
Overview
School students are minors covered by a school data-processing agreement. Their names and progress must never appear in a public-facing context. As a result, the leaderboard page shows different tabs depending on who is logged in:
- Class tab
- School students only: your class, ranked by the XP earned in the selected period. Visible to students in that class and to the teacher.
- School tab
- All students across all classes at your school. Visible to all students and staff at the school. Heads of Department don't see this tab separately, because their Class tab already covers every class in the school.
- Global tab
- Individual accounts only: public, identified by username. Not shown to school students.
- League tab
- Individual accounts only: shows your current league tier standings. This is the tab an individual account opens on by default. Not shown to school students.
The Class and School boards are per-subject. A student sees the board for the subject their class studies, so XP earned in History never lands on a Geography class board. The Global and League boards work differently: Global adds up an individual account's XP across every subject they practise, and League ranks on lifetime league XP, which is a single cross-subject counter.
Choosing what you see
Three sets of controls sit above the board itself:
- Scope tabs
- The row of tabs described above. It only appears when you have more than one board to choose from.
- Period tabs
- This week (the last 7 days) and This month (the last 30 days), with This year (365 days) added for individual accounts. This week is the default. School boards deliberately stop at a month: an all-time board inside a school rewards whoever started first rather than whoever is working now. The period tabs don't apply to the League tab, which is ranked on lifetime league XP.
- Class picker
- For staff with more than one class, a row of class chips appears on the Class tab: All classes plus one chip per class. A teacher sees the classes they own; a Head of Department sees every active class in the school. Students never see this picker, because they have exactly one class per subject.
School leaderboards
School leaderboards exist to give teachers a visible, motivating signal in the classroom, not to pressure students outside it. They are entirely contained within the school context and never appear on any public page.
Class leaderboard
Shows the students in a class, ranked by the XP they earned in the selected period. This is the tab teachers use during lessons: projecting it onto a whiteboard creates an instant live motivation moment. Students can see their own rank and the ranks of their classmates within that class. Students cannot see other classes' leaderboards.
The board lists the top 50 for the period. A student who is on it also sees a personal gap banner giving the XP that would move them one place up, forward-looking rather than focused on the distance to the top. A student who isn't on it yet sees an invitation to run a session, never a position.
School leaderboard
Aggregates students at the school across all classes, again as a top 50 for the period. A Head of Department can use this to compare engagement across the year group. The same personal gap banner shows XP to the next rank up.
Tapping a row on any board opens that student's trading card. A school student's card shows their real name, so it opens only for signed-in users at the same school (and Educator admins). Anyone else who follows the link sees a Not found page. An individual learner's card shows only their username and opens for any signed-in user.
Privacy guarantee. School students' real names and progress figures never appear on any public-facing page. The Global and League tabs are completely separate systems populated only by individual accounts who have signed up independently.
Individual leaderboard (Global tab)
The Global tab is a public leaderboard for anyone who has signed up as an individual learner: students revising independently, home learners, or adults taking a GCSE. School accounts never appear here.
- Ranked by the XP you earned in the selected period, added up across every subject you practise. Switch period with the This week / This month / This year tabs.
- Identified by your chosen username, not your real name. New accounts start with a generated placeholder, and the first time you open the leaderboard you are offered a one-off prompt to replace it with something you like.
- The board shows the top 50 for the period. It is rendered when the page loads rather than ticking over live, so after finishing a session, reload or revisit the page to see your new position.
Because individual accounts are identified by username, you control how much of your identity is public. Many learners use a first name or a pseudonym. Educator never displays your email address or real name on any leaderboard.
League system
The league system is available to individual accounts only. It gives you a long-term progression ladder: you climb tiers by earning lifetime XP, you are never relegated, and you race your own XP total rather than other users. A weekly competitive pool (where standings change based on XP earned that week) is planned for a future update; the current version is solo-progression only.
The 25 standings
There are 25 standings arranged into seven named tiers. Every named tier except Champion has four divisions (IV being entry, I being the top of that tier). Champion is the single top standing.
| Tier | Divisions | Standing count |
|---|---|---|
| Iron | IV, III, II, I | 4 |
| Bronze | IV, III, II, I | 4 |
| Silver | IV, III, II, I | 4 |
| Gold | IV, III, II, I | 4 |
| Platinum | IV, III, II, I | 4 |
| Diamond | IV, III, II, I | 4 |
| Champion | None | 1 |
How promotion works
Promotion is immediate. The moment you cross an XP threshold during a practice session, you are moved into the next standing. Your done screen shows a tier-up banner so you know it happened. There is no waiting until the end of a week or month.
League XP is a lifetime counter: it accumulates from your very first session and never resets (except for the Diamond+ soft-reset mechanic described below). Every correct card you answer in any practice mode adds to it, and the daily login bonus (50 XP on your first dashboard visit each day) also counts toward league XP. Skipped cards and wrong answers do not.
No relegation
In the current version of Educator, you cannot drop down a standing. Iron through Champion is a frictionless upward climb: take a break for a week and you come back in the same tier you left. A soft-reset mechanic for Diamond and above (where your league XP decays to the tier floor if you go inactive) is planned for a future update, but is not live yet.
Placeholder accounts. During the early-growth phase, some seats in each tier are filled by placeholder accounts so the league leaderboard isn't empty. A disclosure message appears at the bottom of the League tab explaining this. Placeholder accounts retire automatically as real users fill each tier.
The League tab
The League tab shows everyone in your current standing: the people at exactly the same tier and division as you, ranked by league XP, up to 100 of them. This is your local pool. As you earn more XP and cross into the next standing, the pool updates to show your new peers.
Above the list, a coloured header gives your standing, your league XP, the next standing up and the XP still to go, with a progress bar for the current band. If you are on the list it also tells you where you sit inside it. When a standing is nearly empty, the page says so in a way that keeps it a climb rather than a comparison.
Browsing the ladder
The League ladder strip runs Iron through Champion across the top of the tab. Tap any tier to look at it, then pick a division with the I to IV chips underneath, where I is the highest and IV the lowest. Champion has no divisions. While you are browsing, your own tier is marked you, a banner names what you are looking at, and a Your tier button brings you back. Browsing is read-only and changes nothing about your own standing. It is there so the climb ahead is visible, which is also why there is no relegation to look down at.
League progress is shown on your dashboard as a compact widget: your current tier badge, XP in that standing, and how far to the next threshold.
What counts toward XP
Every correct card answer earns XP in the quiz modes, at a base rate of 10 XP per correct card. Study mode is the exception: nothing is marked right or wrong there, so it pays 1 XP per card seen instead. It still counts toward your streak. During themed boss-battle events the quiz rate is higher; the event banner on your dashboard tells you when one is running.
- Correct answer in any quiz mode: 10 XP (base)
- Study mode: 1 XP per card seen, whether or not you knew it
- Correct answer during a boss-battle event: 10 + event bonus XP
- Daily login bonus: 50 XP awarded on your first dashboard visit each day (only fires once you have completed at least one session, so new accounts receive it from the second day onwards)
- Wrong answers and skipped cards: no XP
XP feeds three separate counters simultaneously: your subject XP (which drives your subject leaderboard score), your account-wide XP (which drives your rank label), and your league XP. You never have to choose which one to prioritise: every session advances all three.
For a full breakdown of how practice sessions work and how the adaptive card picker chooses which cards to show you, see the Practice wiki page.