stylus, a start-up set to revolutionise teacher workloads with its AI-powered marking and feedback, has raised £500,000 in a recent funding round. The investment was made by Sure Valley Ventures, an AI-focused venture capital firm which supports early-stage companies to scale.
Stylus’ AI-marked, human-moderated feedback solution, LearnCycle, addresses the recruitment and retention crisis in education by removing whole swathes of out-of-hours work associated with marking the assessments that students complete on paper. In doing so it aims to help schools to retain teachers while maintaining high standards of feedback.
The UK education sector is currently facing significant challenges related to teacher recruitment and retention. Statistics show that 40% of new teachers leave the profession within five years, with 92% of these citing high workload as the primary reason. This crisis is impacting schools’ ability to maintain high-quality education standards, as some schools resort to giving no written feedback at all to ensure their teachers’ wellbeing.