A survey by the National Education Union (NEU) revealed that 44% of teachers plan to leave the profession by 2027, with more than half of respondents (52%) saying the workload was “unmanageable” or “unmanageable most of the time”.

Forced to spend time writing out detailed activities and connecting these to the relevant national curriculum to comply with Ofsted regulations, teachers struggle for time to adapt lesson plans to their students’ needs, and they often do not have time to understand where individual students are struggling.

Educators need support in managing their workloads effectively without compromising on quality or compliance with academic standards.

Big Change supported James with early stage funding and tailored support to develop Lessonfit.

Lessonfit has the potential to save teachers three hours per week by assisting them with their lesson planning using AI. The system automatically generates lessons based on the chosen topic and learning objectives in alignment with the national curriculum. After teaching a lesson, teachers will receive an automated report on their students’ current, to-the-moment knowledge gaps. The report is made with a tailored quiz students take after the lesson, and the data is used to automatically draft the next lesson plan.

With reduced time spent on lesson planning, James hopes to reduce teachers’ stress over time, increase their understanding of effective teaching practices, and free them up to provide students with a more personalised education experience.

Whilst studying in college, James observed the barriers to success that many young people feel because of a “one-size-fits-all” system and a lack of a personalised approach. He had a unique route into university whereby he was accepted through demonstrating his coding skills to professors via numerous emails. James achieved academic success studying computer science and AI, but he understands that this success came from a specialised education not available to all students.

James is the Technical Founder an educational app improving student learning through interactive revision exercises and peer learning and support. James credits the subjects covered in his Experimental Psychology master's degree, such as memory, cognition and learning processes, as key to the idea for the start-up.