It’s almost like duplicating the teacher, which reduces workload

Maths on the improvement plan, and gaps to close by Year 6

Maths has been our focus area – it’s been on our school improvement plan for a couple of years. Like everyone, we saw a drop-off after COVID, and even with our recovery curriculum there are still large gaps in knowledge by the time children reach Year 6. The biggest challenges for our children are recall and applying their knowledge to problem-solving questions. Our children often come in below or well below, so we run lots of interventions to close those gaps.

We’d used Third Space Learning before when it was human tutoring, came away from it for a little while, then reinvested to put the focus back on maths. Having used it previously, we knew the system, so we were happy to come back. When I heard the tutoring was now AI, I had mixed feelings – but AI is in so much now, and we were keen to see what it could do.

Scheduled sessions for our off-track Year 6s, self-launch for greater depth

We selected our children using entry data to Year 6, targeting those who were slightly off-track to reach the expected standard in their SATs. We also used the self-launch lessons for our greater-depth children, so they had the chance to stretch themselves too – during assembly time they could self-select the areas they wanted more work on, like algebra and ratio in the run-up to SATs.

Twenty spaces, two groups, everyone gets an intervention

For the scheduled sessions we had 20 spaces split over two groups in the afternoon: while ten children worked with the AI tutor, the rest of the class did whiteboard work or mini-interventions, then the groups swapped, so everyone got some form of maths intervention.

I set it up and then let the children move through the units as they completed them, which keeps it running alongside everything else and takes workload away from staff. Attendance was good because it ran in school time – we’ve found before that running into after-school led to drop-off, but this year, if they’re in, they’re doing it. There were some teething issues with the technology in the first few weeks, but once a bigger update came through those glitches became far less frequent, and it settled down well.

Core skills cemented, then the SATs revision programme

The children who get the most from it are those who enjoy maths and use it to challenge themselves, and those who appreciate the feedback, because it shows them exactly how to improve.

For the majority, it let them revisit and cement core skills, from Year 5 objectives and the four operations through to applying them in different contexts, and as we got closer to SATs we switched them onto the SATs revision programme. We’ve since passed it on to our Year 5s to revisit objectives and be more secure going into Year 6.

On par with the in-person tutors, with less workload

It’s met my expectations and delivered pretty much on par with what the in-person tutors were doing. It breaks the questions down and gives pupils the chance to respond in a variety of ways, whether they’re explaining verbally or inputting their answers.

The main benefit is that it gives children that extra intervention, and even with the self-launch sessions they’re still guided through the questions, it breaks things down and picks up misconceptions.

It’s almost like duplicating the teacher, which reduces workload and gives our greater-depth children the challenge it can be hard to reach them with in class.

If another school was considering it, I’d say get the children well-trained in setting it up so you overcome any initial tech issues – that gives every lesson a really smooth start. It can be used for any ability group in the class, which has been really beneficial for us this year.

We love the resources too, Fluent in Five for our morning starters, and the problem-solving and SATs guides for display. The customer service has also been really speedy whenever we’ve had an issue, we’ve booked on for another year.