A personal GSCE maths tutor for every student who needs it

Frequently asked questions

How does the unlimited AI tutoring from Third Space Learning work?

You’ll pay one low fixed yearly cost depending on the size of your school and are free to run as many sessions for as many pupils as needed with no impact on this fixed cost. Prices start from £3,500 per year.

How does it fit into the school day?

Research suggests that tutoring is much more effective when it is scheduled into the school day rather than on-demand. Unlike with traditional tutoring, scheduled sessions with Skye are available every 5 minutes, can last for any duration you prefer and can take place as many times per week as needed. You can add sessions to or amend your schedule at any point for no additional cost.

Who created Skye?

Skye has been built by the same team of former maths teachers and technologists who’ve built Third Space Learning’s tutoring programmes for schools since 2013, with extensive input from pupils and teachers. Testing with pupils began in July 2024, followed by a pilot programme with the first cohort of schools that September. Gathering feedback from and visiting as many of these schools as possible has been a key part of our approach.

How is the learning personalised?

Pupils complete a diagnostic assessment before their first session with Skye to ensure learning is personalised to their gaps. At the start of each lesson, Skye will start with a short formative assessment and adapt teaching accordingly to ensure teaching is in each pupil’s Zone of Proximal Development; revisiting prior learning if needed or moving straight onto independent practice and challenge questions if the pupil is secure.

How does AI tutoring from Skye work?

Each pupil will communicate with Skye via a shared screen and an audio connection, talking to each other one to one. Pupils’ audio will automatically be transcribed and shared with Skye, who has been specially trained to interpret and respond to the pupil just like our community of tutors.

How has Skye been trained to teach?

The system prompt guides Skye to apply essential tutor moves such as motivation, relating to interests, modelling, waiting, rephrasing, scaffolding, affirming relationships, and encouraging verbal reasoning to support student learning throughout the session. Lessons are structured in small steps using the CPA (Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract) approach, ensuring concepts are introduced progressively and misconceptions are addressed. This combination of targeted tutoring strategies and structured lesson design enables Skye to adapt to student needs, encourages engagement, and maintain steady learning progress.

What happens if a pupil gets an answer wrong?

Just like our community of tutors, Skye has been trained to identify and address common misconceptions. The prompts used relate to the specific question and topic being covered, so if a pupil gets an answer wrong Skye will be able to spot why they might be struggling and guide them to success. First, Skye will provide a hint relevant to the part they got wrong, to try and steer them towards the right answer, and then asks them to have another go. If a pupil gets an answer wrong 3 times, Skye will talk them through the correct answer and make sure they understand before moving on.

What impact does it have?

Skye has been trained in the same way as our community of tutors, and uses the same curriculum of lessons. These resulted in 7 months’ progress in 14 weeks. Early data suggests that pupils do better on post-session questions with Skye and attendance is higher due to increased flexibility.

Is the the content aligned with the national curriculum?

Yes, Skye uses the same lessons as our community of tutors, all of which have been developed by our academic team of former teachers and follow the national curriculum.

How much does AI tutoring from Skye cost?

The low fixed yearly price depends on the size of your school. Prices start from £3,500 per year. Please contact Third Space Learning to receive a personalised price for your school. You can run as many sessions for as many pupils as required for this same low yearly price.

How does the cost compare to other tutoring providers?

The average cost of online one to one tutoring from other providers is around £45 per session. If a school ran 10 sessions every week, this would cost over £16,000 for the year. With Skye, prices start from £3,500 per year for as many sessions as required by the school.

What safeguarding is in place?

Safeguarding by design:
Sessions with Skye can only be scheduled by school staff for a timeslot chosen by the school and always take place on the school premises under the supervision of school staff. The connection between pupils and Skye is audio-only, with no video connection. The only visual component is via the shared screen which only ever shows lesson slides created by our academic team. Skye cannot display anything else on the screen.

Built-in safeguarding:
We use a highly moderated AI model which places guardrails around the content that can be covered and how Skye engages with pupils. Additional guardrails ensure the lesson cannot be moved off the maths tutoring content that Skye has been trained to cover.

Red flag policy:
Just like our tutor community, Skye has been trained to flag anything that could be linked to safeguarding. All sessions are recorded which enables us to review flagged sessions and, where relevant, share recordings with the pupil’s school.

What’s required to run the sessions?

All you need is an internet connection, a space for the sessions to take place, and a microphone headset and device for each pupil.