5 Ways Schools Are Using AI Tutoring To Reach More Pupils For A Lower Cost

Find out how headteachers and heads of maths are slotting AI tutoring into the school day in a variety of ways all aimed at achieving better outcomes in maths.

With Skye, the AI tutor who talks and responds to your pupils, there’s no limit to the number of lessons and pupils it can teach maths to at any one time.

Since the start of 2025, UK pupils have spent over 5,000 hours talking maths with Skye, the new AI maths tutor, at a fraction of the cost of traditional online tutoring.

Skye is built on the same principles and by the same team of current and former teachers who have created Third Space Learning’s online one to one tutoring programmes for schools since 2013.

AI tutoring replicates the experience of traditional online maths tutoring, offering adaptive, dialogue-driven one to one teaching where pupils communicate with their tutor via a shared screen and a microphone headset. In other words, ‘voice tutoring’. 

But to match schools’ challenging budgets, we’ve been able to make it much more affordable (starting from £3,500 for all the pupils in your school – one form entry).

We know that AI in education is still a new concept, so here we’ve collected the five most common reasons and use cases schools give us for running AI maths tutoring with Skye in their school, so you can see how your pupils and staff can put it to work too.

1. Ease of scheduling weekly one-to-one slots – before, during or after school

According to the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) tutoring report, regular one to one tuition has excellent evidence for improving student outcomes, providing on average five additional months’ progress. 

Evidence also shows that the most effective tutoring:

• is in short, regular sessions
• runs for a set period of time
• explicitly links to class teaching
• is monitored for progress by teachers

This is how schools have used online one to one maths tutoring with Third Space Learning since 2013: picking a timeslot that works for their pupils and scheduling tutoring to run one or more times each week for the pupils they feel need it most.

Personalised learning paths for each pupil

Just like our traditional tutoring, AI tutoring sessions with Skye are built on human expertise and personalised to each pupil while still enabling teachers to control the content covered. This means schools can use their regular, scheduled tutoring sessions in a variety of ways:

• Address individual gaps and misconceptions
• Focus on specific strands, concepts and topics
• Align with class teaching
• Pre-teach tricky topics
• For exam revision

What changes with Skye? More pupils and more flexibility

With AI tutoring from Skye, schools can continue to use tutoring in this way, but with increased ease and flexibility, and for more pupils at a lower cost. 

No matter how many sessions each school needs, there’s just one low fixed yearly price, depending on school size. One low annual price means schools can implement early interventions for pupils to address and close gaps, not just for those approaching exams.

Scheduling AI tutoring

Previously, all Third Space Learning tutoring sessions took place with one of our community of STEM specialist tutors, meaning we needed to factor in the scheduling of both the pupil and the tutor. As such, tutoring timeslots were only available on the hour and the half hour. 

We don’t need to worry about Skye’s schedule as scheduled sessions can be booked to start every 5-minutes. Schools can use the best AI tutors to build their own custom tutoring schedule that fits into their school timetable, pupil and staff needs, and topical or termly school events.

It’s allowed us to get more children onto the programme because it’s so affordable and flexible. No need to start the sessions on the hour or half hour. We can do after-school slots on Mondays and Thursdays, a group at 10:15 on a Friday and one at 1:35 on a Wednesday. Plus, if we need to reschedule a session, we don’t need to worry about their usual tutor not being available at the new time. It’s always Skye, no matter the time. That’s the beauty of it.

David Gooding, Assistant Head,
Harrison Primary School, Fareham

Examples of school AI tutoring schedules

2. Intensive revision in the run-up to SATs and GCSEs

Of course, tutoring is most effective as a long-term solution rather than a ‘quick fix’, but the reality remains that many pupils would benefit from more intensive support as exams draw closer.

When exams are looming, schools often want to increase the number of their sessions, but before Skye, this could be difficult to organise, and it would add to their annual cost.

Now, with flexible AI tutoring for a fixed annual payment, you can double or even triple each pupil’s weekly sessions in the spring and summer term for zero additional cost. It’s all included in the fixed low yearly cost. 

This means no more last-minute orders, juggling who gets the extra help, or compromising on the requirements of each pupil. You could even give every borderline pupil personalised support with their own maths tutor right up to the day of the exam.

Examples of school usage across a year

3. Ad-hoc cover sessions when staff are absent

Staff absences have shot up in recent years, leaving leaders scrambling for last-minute cover. According to Schools Week, staff absences have doubled since Covid.

This is one of the most commonly cited challenges for headteachers and heads of maths. As well as the scheduled tutoring sessions, schools can also launch AI maths sessions on-demand for any pupil or class who is without their usual teacher, allowing pupils to continue receiving high-quality teaching.

You can choose for pupils to review lessons they have already covered with Skye, or start a new lesson. If they don’t quite make it through the whole Learning Objective, they’ll pick up where they left off next time.

Ad-hoc sessions can also be used for pupils who don’t have regular scheduled tutoring with Skye.

4. Set homework sessions with Skye

Most take-home tasks still rely on paper worksheets or auto-marked quizzes that can’t diagnose why a pupil is struggling. Because sessions with Skye, the intelligent tutoring system, can happen on-demand at any time, Skye can bring the same one-to-one conversations pupils enjoy in school straight to their kitchen tables, giving them a tutor’s guidance and instant feedback even when you’re not there.

Because Skye only ever teaches lessons created by maths teachers like you, you can be reassured that the feedback and support given is accurate and age appropriate. This very different from other AI tools that simply provide a right or wrong answer (and sometimes they don’t even do that well) without building the pupil’s understanding.

Homework developed in partnership with schools

It’s really important to us that every new feature is built in collaboration with schools to ensure it:

• aligns with your safeguarding and data-protection policies;
• integrates seamlessly with existing Skye progress reports;
• keeps teacher workload to almost zero – no marking, no manual uploads.

That’s why we’re currently working closely with schools to review and refine the on-demand session feature and ensure it aligns with each school’s needs, including their homework approach.

We’re thrilled to be at the forefront of using Third Space Learning’s AI voice tutoring. This innovative one-to-one maths tutoring solution offers an even more cost-effective alternative. The children have thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and their engagement and focus are clearly evident.

Chris Harris, Deputy Head,
Admiral’s Academy, Norfolk

5. As a teaching assistant for additional maths interventions

While tutoring is predominantly used as an intervention for the pupils who are most in need, there’s no reason why schools can’t use tutoring for a wider cohort of pupils.

While you or your teacher focus on whole-class teaching or a specific group, Skye can give any number of pupils their own personalised maths lesson. At no extra cost.

Because Skye is AI-driven, it never has to split its time. Ten, twenty or fifty pupils can all receive individualised tuition in the same lesson slot for the same fixed annual price, instead of eating into your staffing budget or TA hours.

For example, Barton Park Primary School, a small school in Oxfordshire, has mixed Year 5 and 6 classes. Their class teacher, Amy, found that, in the lead up to SATs, she was inevitably spending more time with her Year 6 pupils when it came to maths, leaving her Year 5 pupils without as much support.

The school implemented Skye to support their whole Year 6 cohort for 30 minutes twice a week. During this time, Skye would work one-to-one with each Year 6 pupil, working through a programme of personalised SATs-style questions (just like a TA but with even more capacity!), leaving Amy free to teach a full Year 5 maths lesson uninterrupted.

Making the most of Skye for your pupils

With Skye, each child:

• Works on the exact gap you (or Skye’s diagnostic) have identified – they never have to follow the same lesson as the pupil next to them.
• Gets true one-to-one attention the whole time – Skye listens, questions, gives hints and nudges them forward just like a skilled human TA.
• Stays perfectly in sync with your curriculum – every lesson comes from the teacher-designed Third Space Learning library.
• Finishes with instant feedback, you can use immediately – progress and misconceptions are logged in real time, ready for their next classroom lesson.

At a time when schools are under pressure to do more with less, solutions like Skye offer an efficient, scalable option that works alongside existing classroom support to help close gaps and keep all learners on track.