From 15 targeted pupils to the whole Year 6 cohort of 44, on one fixed cost

Funding for 15 pupils, and far more who needed it

We’re a 1.5-form entry primary, and around 52% of our children are disadvantaged. It’s a significantly deprived intake, and there’s a big overlap between pupil premium and SEND. For some of our children, that’s a double barrier. Many arrive with significant numeracy gaps, and engagement in maths can be a real challenge.

Under the old, per-pupil pricing model, our funding only stretched to around 15 ‘cuspy’ Year 6 pupils we were targeting for SATs. So every year I faced the same decision: which 15? Too many children needed it, and whatever we put in place felt like a drop in the ocean against the actual need. And there was always the staffing question – who delivers it, and what does that cost us in teacher time?

Escaping the rationing trap

We’d used Third Space Learning’s human tutoring for years and it worked really well, but it was limited to about 15 pupils because we paid per pupil, per session. The more children we wanted to support, the more it cost.

The lightbulb moment with Skye, the AI maths tutor, was that it’s one fixed cost, not a cost per child. So the rationing decision just falls away. We could go from 15 pupils to a whole cohort. That’s why we’ve been able to support 44 Year 6 pupils this year. And I trusted the content straight away, because I’d already seen Third Space’s human tutoring and resources first-hand.

Two mornings a week, the whole of Year 6

We’ve gone from those 15 cuspy pupils to the whole Year 6 cohort – 44 children. I split them across two mornings: 22 on Tuesdays and 22 on Wednesdays. We start about 15 minutes early and it runs straight into the normal maths lesson. They’re on different programmes depending on what they need – some on revision, some on baseline-identified gap programmes, and the higher attainers on the SATs booster.

All the pupils are in one room, laptops set up ready. It’s me plus a teaching assistant. The TA handles the headsets and logistics for the first ten minutes, then we both circulate. I’m walking round constantly, checking over shoulders and gauging confidence, and every child has a dedicated Third Space Learning maths book for working out and annotations.

I stay in the room myself, because a maths teacher in the room – not a passive TA – makes the difference. I step in if Skye misreads a child. It doesn’t work if the adult treats it as time to do their own work; the children pick up on that energy. Setting it all up was quick.

Talking out loud to an AI tutor

One thing that surprises a lot of primary teachers is the spoken element – a room of pupils talking out loud to an AI maths tutor. Our children can and do talk with confidence, even in a full room.

Some were reluctant at first to ‘talk to a robot’, especially in a community like ours where children may not see many positive relationships outside school. But the back-and-forth on screen, and having a familiar adult in the room, breaks that barrier down quickly. After a year of weekly sessions it stops feeling like speaking to a robot, and that consistency has helped relationships in a way the old online human tutors couldn’t.

Teaching every child through their mistakes

In a normal classroom, one teacher can’t teach thirty different lessons at once, so some pupils wait and others coast. With Skye, every pupil in the room has a lesson built around what they actually need, and the moment that matters most is when a pupil gets something wrong.

It’s one of the things that struck me most when I’m walking round during a session. Skye never just says ‘that’s wrong, try again.’ It starts by recognising what the child has got right, then builds from there. I’ve heard it say something like, ‘you’ve correctly identified the tens column, lovely – now let’s go a step further and write your answer as a decimal.’ It picks up on the misconception, then guides and encourages until the child gets there. That patient, step-by-step input is exactly what I can’t give a whole room at once on my own.

Attendance and equity

There’s one thing that matters enormously for disadvantaged pupils specifically: attendance. The cuspy and disadvantaged children often had attendance problems – sometimes we’d be doing home visits just to get them in for an early human-tutor session. Under the old model, a missed scheduled session was simply gone, and it was costly.

With Skye’s self-launch sessions, the children can log on whenever they need to. If someone misses Tuesday, they still get their session. That builds ownership and responsibility for their own learning.

Safeguarding and parental trust

Bringing AI into a primary setting, safeguarding was top of mind. We went through the DPIA and GDPR process, and the fact that Skye is a closed system – so pupils’ voices and data aren’t floating around the wider internet – was really reassuring. Every session is recorded and there’s a red-flag monitoring system that picks up anything of concern. For us, having a maths teacher in the room throughout matters too. It’s never just the child and Skye.

Is the gap closing? The evidence

This year Skye has supported 44 Year 6 pupils at De Lacy. We’ve delivered 583 sessions and 1,402 learning objectives. 86% of our pupils demonstrated a secure understanding by the end of each session – so they’re not just sitting the session, they’re leaving it more secure than they came in. And 91% of lessons ended with pupils reporting maintained or improved confidence, with an average pupil survey score of 3.7 out of 5.

For a primary audience, that confidence point matters as much as the maths. When 91% of lessons end with a pupil feeling as confident or more confident than when they started, that’s a lot of small wins stacking up every single morning. All of that data is captured and assessed for us, so it doesn’t fall to a stretched maths lead to pull it together by hand.

Getting ahead of the gap in Year 5

The most effective way to close a gap is to stop it opening in the first place. Next year I’m planning to roll Skye out to all of Year 5, not just a target group, and I’m looking at Year 4 too. I want to start Year 5 this year, so the teething problems – reluctance to speak, tech issues – are ironed out before September, and the programme rolls from Year 5 into Year 6 rather than starting cold in the autumn.

The gaps we see in Year 6 very rarely start in Year 6. Take rounding: a conceptual gap that can be traced right back to Year 3 or Year 4. If we can use something we’ve already paid for to close those foundational gaps earlier, we’re not firefighting in Year 6 – and the pupils furthest behind are the ones who gain the most.