For schools

Running a successful pilot

Every school subscription starts with a free four-week pilot. This page explains what the pilot includes, what a successful pilot looks like week by week, and how to make the case to your SLT after it.

What the pilot includes

The pilot is the full product, not a cut-down trial. You get four weeks of complete access to every feature, with no student limit and no card required.

Unlimited students: Add as many students as you teach. One class of 28 or five classes of 32: the pilot does not restrict student numbers.
Unlimited teachers: Invite every teacher in the department. If your Food and Science teams both want to trial Educator, they both can, on the same school account.
All teacher tools: Live sessions, homework assignments, Class accuracy by topic, student-level detail, and the weekly digest email (which each teacher turns on from their profile) are all available from day one. Nothing is withheld until you pay.
Multiple subjects: If you want to pilot two subjects simultaneously (say Food GCSE and Geography GCSE), both run free for the full four weeks. Subjects available to pilot today: Food, History, Geography, Combined Science, Computer Science, Religious Studies, Design & Technology, Business Studies, PE Theory, Drama, Sociology, and Psychology, plus Music (in Beta), each at GCSE with matching KS3 bundled.
No card, no commitment: The pilot starts the moment you create your school account. No purchase order is needed upfront, no billing details are captured. If you choose not to convert, nothing is charged.

One pilot per subject: the four-week clock runs independently per subject. If you add a second subject two weeks into the pilot, that subject gets its own full four weeks from the day you add it.

Week 1: getting started

The goal for week one is simple: get at least 60% of your students to complete their first session. That first session is the hardest threshold to cross. Once a student has seen the app working, the feedback loop does the rest.

Setup checklist

Create your school account. Sign up at educator-labs.com and select Teacher. You are then asked whether your school is already on Educator, with nothing pre-selected. If nobody has registered it, choose No - I'll set it up, enter the school name, and you become its first Head of Department. If a colleague beat you to it, Educator blocks the duplicate and names the existing school: get the invite code from them, or choose Yes - find my school in the directory, search for it, and a Head of Department approves you by email. Once you are in, colleagues join via the school invite code on your School page (HoD-only).
Tune your class. Onboarding already created your first class from the subject, exam board, class name, and year group you gave it during sign-up. Open its settings page and restrict the topic filter to only the content you've taught so far - the creation form has no topic control, so this is the only place to do it. Do it before you share the code, so students don't meet unfamiliar material in week one. Foundation / Higher tier is on the same settings page. Use Class → + Create another class only when you need an additional class later.
Share the class code. Paste it into your VLE, display it on the projector, and send it via your school's messaging system. Students who are signing up for the first time enter the code during onboarding. Students who already have an account go to educator-labs.com/join and type it there. Either way, the direct link and QR code on the class launch screen and print pack carry the code for them. Age is not a barrier on this route: a pupil of any year group, including Y7 or Y8, can join with the code, because the school is the data controller and the live code is the evidence it authorised them - Educator collects no parental consent for class-joined pupils. Parental communication about the rollout stays your school's own arrangement.
Introduce it in class, with you present. The single biggest predictor of week-one engagement is a warm handoff from the teacher. Take five minutes in a lesson to show students what the cards look like, explain the streak mechanic (“one session a day keeps your streak alive; miss a day and it resets”), and let them ask questions.
Run a live session as an icebreaker. The first lesson is a natural moment to run a live session together. Students join from their dashboards, answer the same cards simultaneously, and see the leaderboard update in real time on the projector. It demonstrates the format without requiring any preparation and tends to generate genuine energy.

Tip: if students struggle to sign up at home, allocate ten minutes in a computer room or ask them to use their phones in class. The sign-up flow takes under two minutes. The bottleneck is usually remembering to do it, not the process itself.

Week 2: establishing the habit

Experience with early cohorts suggests that students who reach the end of week two with a streak of seven or more tend to keep going. Week two is about locking in that habit before the novelty wears off.

What to do this week

Check for drop-off. Your staff dashboard names the class with the most students who haven't practised this week and links straight to it; the class roster there sorts students by activity. Anyone who hasn't logged a session since day one will be near the bottom. A brief mention in class (“a few of you haven't started yet, five minutes tonight is all it takes”) is often enough to prompt them. You don't need to name individuals.
Set your first homework assignment. Go to the class page → Set homework. Pick one or two topics you've recently taught and give it a due date before the end of the week. The assignment appears on every student's dashboard the moment you publish it. First-time completers earn a streak freeze, a small but real incentive that students notice.
Reinforce the streak publicly. Ask at the start of a lesson: “Who's got a streak going? How long?” A brief classroom moment of recognition costs nothing and tells students you're watching the data.
Check the weekly digest email. It is off until you opt in, so turn it on from your profile (/me) in week one. From then on Educator sends you a class summary every Sunday evening: total sessions, average accuracy, top performers, and students whose streak has recently dropped. It takes thirty seconds to read and gives you the week's numbers without opening the dashboard.

Week 3: using the data

By week three, Class accuracy by topic on your class page has enough signal to be genuinely useful. This is the week to let the data drive a teaching decision.

Reading the data

The Class accuracy by topic section on your class page shows each topic with a colour-coded accuracy bar: green (≥80%), amber (50–79%), or red (<50%). Topics in red or amber where you've already taught the content are your intervention priorities. Click any topic to see per-card class accuracy, including which specific cards students are getting wrong most often and what the most common wrong answers are.

What to do with it

Identify your intervention topics. Look for topics you taught several weeks ago that are still showing red: these are the ones students have encountered but aren't retaining. They're your priorities before the next assessment.
Run a live session on the weakest topic. Start live session → select the weak topic → 10–15 cards. The competitive energy of a live session drives more engagement than solo practice. Note: live sessions earn XP but don't update mastery levels, so follow up with a homework assignment on the same topic to drive independent spaced practice.
Drill into specific cards for targeted support. Click a topic to see which cards have the lowest accuracy and what wrong answers students are giving. If most of the class is consistently choosing the same distractor, that misconception is worth addressing directly in the next lesson.
Set a homework targeting the gap. Homework set on the weak topic drives more focused practice on exactly the area the data flagged. It also gives you a completion view, so you can see who did the targeted revision and who didn't.

Note: Class accuracy by topic reflects practice sessions only, not classroom time. A topic showing no data means students haven't practised it yet, not necessarily that they don't know it. Use the data alongside your knowledge of the teaching schedule.

Week 4: making the case

In week four, start pulling together the numbers you'll need for a conversation with your Head of Department or SLT. The class summary gives you the headline figures; the framing below helps you translate them into a business case.

What to pull from your class page

Total sessions: The sum of every practice session completed by your class across the four weeks. Convert this to student-hours: an average session is around three minutes, so divide by 20 to get a rough hours figure.
Average accuracy: The proportion of cards answered correctly across all sessions. This is your headline recall quality indicator. A class averaging 65–75% is in a healthy zone; consistently above 85% suggests the topic filter is set too narrow (students are only seeing cards they already know).
Mastery progress: How many cards have moved from Unseen to Familiar or better across the class? This is the most concrete measure of learning. It shows how much of the specification students have actively engaged with in four weeks of independent practice.
Engagement rate: What percentage of your class completed at least one session per week? A rate above 70% is strong for a four-week pilot; above 80% is exceptional.
CSV export: The class page has CSV export buttons for last 7 days / last 28 days / all time, producing one downloadable file with per-student sessions and accuracy. For a bursar or SLT paper, a downloadable file beats a screenshot.

Framing the conversation

Compare to a homework sheet. If your class generated 400 student-sessions in four weeks, that's roughly 20 student-hours of active recall practice, with zero marking time for you. A comparable homework-sheet programme would require setting, chasing, collecting, and marking work every week.
Quote the cost per student. At £400/year +VAT for the Department tier with unlimited students, a school with 90 students across three Food classes pays under £4.50 per student per year, less than 40p per student per month. Frame it against the cost of a revision guide or a set of textbooks.
Lead with the evidence base. Spaced retrieval practice is one of the most replicated findings in educational psychology, with effect sizes in the 0.5–0.8 range in controlled studies. Educator implements the spaced-repetition algorithm automatically; teachers don't need to know the theory to benefit from it.

After the pilot

At the end of four weeks you have two paths: convert or step away. Either way, your students' data is protected.

If you convert: Data carries over seamlessly: every student's mastery progress, XP, streak, and session history is preserved. There is no re-import or reset. Students won't notice any difference except that the school account is now paid. A Head of Department can convert without contacting us, from the Subject licences panel on the School page (/school): Subscribe pays for a subject by card through Stripe, and Request invoice sends your finance team a Whole-school invoice payable by BACS or card. Or email hello@educator-labs.com and we'll issue an invoice within 24 hours.
If you don't convert: At the end of the four-week pilot, student practice access pauses immediately. No new sessions can be started. Data is preserved for 60 days; if you convert during that window, access resumes with all progress intact. After 60 days without conversion, all data is permanently deleted in line with UK GDPR.
Invoicing & POs: We can supply a formal quote for your finance team or bursar. Contact hello@educator-labs.com with your school name and subjects, and we'll turn around a quote suitable for a purchase order within one working day.

Making the case to SLT

Senior leaders need to know the investment is justified. Here are the four arguments that tend to land best, in order of impact.

1. Cost per student is unusually low

£400 per year +VAT for the Department tier covers unlimited students, with no per-seat charge. A typical secondary Food department has 60–120 students across GCSE years. At 100 students, the cost is £4 per student per year. Compare that to a revision guide (£10– £15 per student, one-time) or a CGP subscription (£5–£8 per student per year, passive reading only). Educator costs less and requires active recall, which has a much stronger evidence base than re-reading.

2. Time-on-task data is concrete and auditable

The dashboard produces a session count for any date range, which you can use as a rough proxy for time on task. This is quantitative evidence of independent study that a revision guide or flashcard pack cannot produce. For SLTs under Ofsted pressure around homework quality and independent study habits, this data is worth having.

3. Teacher time saved vs. marking homework

A traditional weekly recall homework takes 30–60 minutes per class to mark. Educator marks automatically and surfaces the result immediately. The teacher sees completion rates and accuracy data without opening a single book. Over a 36-week school year, this is a meaningful workload reduction. SLTs who are tracking teacher workload and retention will understand this framing.

4. The evidence base for spaced repetition is strong

Spaced retrieval practice is among the most replicated findings in cognitive psychology, with effect sizes of 0.5–0.8 routinely observed in controlled studies comparing retrieval practice to re-reading or highlighting. The Education Endowment Foundation rates it as high-impact, low-cost. Educator implements the spacing algorithm automatically, so the pedagogical benefit is built into every session without requiring teachers to design the retrieval schedule themselves.

Two reports you can print from within Educator:

SLT summary report at /school/report: one-page PDF of headline engagement, per-class accuracy, and mastery trend. Print from your browser. No manual compilation needed.
Spec-to-card alignment PDF at /spec-mapping: shows exactly which card covers which exam-board specification point. Useful for procurement conversations where SLT or governors ask whether the content matches what is actually assessed.

Need a one-pager? Email hello@educator-labs.com and we'll send you a PDF summary (one page of evidence, cost comparison, and key features) formatted for a governor or SLT briefing pack.

Common pilot pitfalls

Most underperforming pilots share one or more of the same failure modes. They're all avoidable.

Not introducing it in class

Students who receive a class code via email with no in-class explanation almost never activate. The code looks like noise without context. Five minutes in a lesson (explaining what the app does, showing the streak mechanic, and ideally doing a live session together) is the minimum warm handoff. Pilots where teachers skip this step typically see under 30% activation.

Not setting homework

Homework assignments do two things: they create a visible deadline that drives sessions, and they give the first completer a streak freeze, a concrete reward that students notice. Without homework, Educator competes against everything else on a student's phone with no external deadline anchoring it. Pilots without at least one homework per week in the first fortnight consistently show weaker week-two retention.

Not checking the dashboard

Drop-off is concentrated in the first ten days. Students who haven't logged a session by day seven rarely start at all, but a single mention in class is usually enough to pull them back. If you only open the dashboard at the end of week four, you've missed the intervention window. Five minutes with the class roster at the start of week two is the highest-leverage action available to you.

Setting the topic filter too wide too soon

If students encounter cards about content they haven't been taught yet, they guess randomly and come away feeling the app is too hard. Start with a narrow topic filter (just the content covered so far this term) and expand it as you teach more of the specification. The Scheme of work view is most useful once students have had repeated encounters with each topic; a wide filter too early dilutes the signal.

School pricing at a glance

All tiers include unlimited students, unlimited teachers, and all teacher tools. KS3 is bundled free with every matching GCSE subject. All prices +VAT. The figures below, and the cost-per-student comparisons earlier on this page, are quoted excluding VAT.

First subject: £400 / year. Department tier. One subject, all year groups, unlimited students.
Each additional subject: £350 / year each, same Department terms. It is per subject, not a one-off second-subject rate, so three subjects is £400 + £350 + £350 = £1,100.
All subjects: £2,000 / year. Whole-school tier. Every subject, every department, every student.
MAT pricing: Available on request for multi-academy trusts rolling out across three or more schools: 25% off the Whole-school rate per school. Email hello@educator-labs.com.

School setup & permissions: creating classes, managing students, teacher roles, and licensing
Homework: setting assignments, streak freezes, and tracking completion
Live sessions: running a real-time class session with a live leaderboard
Spaced repetition: the evidence base behind how Educator sequences cards
Practice modes: Standard, Speed Round, Marathon, Drill weak cards, and more