Transforming a Successful, High-Growth EdTech App Into an Inclusive Innovation for SEND Alternative Qualifications
Lead Participant:
GET ADAPT LTD
Abstract
Adapt, a ML-powered study planning app for GCSE and A-Level students, launched in January 2020 to great acclaim in the UK Secondary School market. Upon launch, the company shot to Number 1 on the Education App Store, winning CVC's Young Innovator of the Year Award in 2019, being featured by Apple on the front page of the App Store in 2020 and winning London Tech Week's Elevating Founders Europe Competition in 2021\. To date, Adapt has acquired over 500,000 active users in over 3,000 schools, and continues to grow by 1000-2000 students per day.
Adapt's EdTech product is a revision timetable app, driven by teacher expertise and built with students, which makes a perfect revision plan in under a minute and then continually adapts it to ensure it's always up to date. Adapt is now seeking to diversify its offering by "adapting" its tried and tested technology to non-mainstream SEND Alternative Qualifications; something which has never been done before. Rather than provide courses of study based on GCSE and A-Level exams, Adapt's SEND Alternative Qualifications app will provide courses of study on the Unit Award Scheme (UAS), ELCs and Developed Entry Levels. Each course will be bought by (and tailored to) special schools in the SEND system, alternative provision, and other non-mainstream settings which offer Alternative Qualifications. Those schools and settings will also have access to a matching dynamic data dashboard for their teachers and leaders, showing them in real time where their SEND students are confident and where they are struggling.
This will allow teachers and schools to monitor much more successfully the progress of SEND students in non-mainstream education; particularly important for SEND students, who face additional barriers to independent learning (e.g., struggling to begin a task, losing interest in learning, and rarely finishing tasks, Tohara et al., 2021). This will reduce their failure rate and ensure more young people with SEND successfully graduate into the workplace, addressing the key challenge identified by the DfE in 2022 that "outcomes for children and young people with SEND or in alternative provision are consistently worse than their peers across every measure."
Adapt's EdTech product is a revision timetable app, driven by teacher expertise and built with students, which makes a perfect revision plan in under a minute and then continually adapts it to ensure it's always up to date. Adapt is now seeking to diversify its offering by "adapting" its tried and tested technology to non-mainstream SEND Alternative Qualifications; something which has never been done before. Rather than provide courses of study based on GCSE and A-Level exams, Adapt's SEND Alternative Qualifications app will provide courses of study on the Unit Award Scheme (UAS), ELCs and Developed Entry Levels. Each course will be bought by (and tailored to) special schools in the SEND system, alternative provision, and other non-mainstream settings which offer Alternative Qualifications. Those schools and settings will also have access to a matching dynamic data dashboard for their teachers and leaders, showing them in real time where their SEND students are confident and where they are struggling.
This will allow teachers and schools to monitor much more successfully the progress of SEND students in non-mainstream education; particularly important for SEND students, who face additional barriers to independent learning (e.g., struggling to begin a task, losing interest in learning, and rarely finishing tasks, Tohara et al., 2021). This will reduce their failure rate and ensure more young people with SEND successfully graduate into the workplace, addressing the key challenge identified by the DfE in 2022 that "outcomes for children and young people with SEND or in alternative provision are consistently worse than their peers across every measure."
Lead Participant | Project Cost | Grant Offer |
---|---|---|
GET ADAPT LTD | £50,000 | £ 50,000 |
People |
ORCID iD |
Maud Millar (Project Manager) |