70651Independent digital assessment and learning for vulnerable pupilsClosedFeasibility StudiesInnovate UKFlashAcademy learning and assessment is a new app platform that will help vulnerable pupils to more easily continue learning, inside and outside of school. Teachers will be able to use FlashAcademy to remotely set short 'English proficiency' assessments and learning modules that are tailored to the needs of each pupil, helping to ensure that students are provided with independent learning that can be completed on a smartphone, tablet or PC from any location - including the dining room table at home. The platform will use 'machine learning' to keep challenging pupils in an appropriate way and also delivers learning from 45 different home languages, for children who do not have English as their first language. Being able to remotely deploy short digital assessments provides teachers with a more flexible way to keep track of pupil progress and ensure that no pupil is left behind. This is particularly important for vulnerable pupil groups, such as the 1.5m pupils that do not have English as a first language and those with SEN or high literacy needs. FlashAcademy has been developed by Learning Labs, a UK EdTech company based at the Innovation Birmingham Campus. During the current pandemic, their independent technology has already been used by more than 60,000 school pupils in the UK, as well as by schools in China and Italy. Innovate UK funding is helping the team to develop a fully digital 'English Proficiency' assessment platform to assist teachers with their ability to maintain learning progress outside of a school setting. The project is seeking to save a proportion of the c.2m hours of teacher time spent each year using paper-based assessments, whilst also providing real-time access to data and reporting. As a second step, the project will also launch the assessments and learning platform for business, working closely with the manufacturing association, MAKE UK. FlashAcademy Workplace will help companies to deploy independent 'English proficiency' assessment and learning for their employees that do not have English as a first language. This new form of digital training will focus on 'Health & Safety' to help keep more employees safe and technical vocabulary to help improve digital training. This will be an important new innovation for the construction sector, where it has been shown that migrant workers are twice as likely to die on site due to their lack of English proficiency (source: Irwin Mitchell and the Centre for Corporate Accountability, 2009). EXTENSION FOR IMPACT FUNDING: Additional funding will enable: • schools to better respond to new legislation requiring equivalent standards of remote education provision, especially for vulnerable/BAME pupil groups. • provision of the new digital English assessment for FREE to all UK schools – reaching more pupils, more quickly, when time is of the essence for this vulnerable group of learners. • Greater impact for this marginalised group of learners, supporting faster catch-up of lost learning. • Higher quality data and faster adoption, with more in-depth pupil, cohort and national insight.