STEMeUp is an adaptive maths tutor we’re building for children in care — and for the network of Designated Teachers, PEP Caseworkers, and Virtual School Heads working alongside them.
Pre-build. Starting in the North East — talking to schools and local authorities now.
At STEMeUp, we believe grades are not a good representation of anyone’s potential. Entering care comes with a wide range of disruptions — and those disruptions create learning gaps that can feel impossible to catch up from. This has nothing to do with talent or ability.
For most children, knowledge and potential overlap so closely that one is a fair proxy for the other. For care-experienced learners, disruption has broken that link. The knowledge you can measure isn’t the potential you’d see if the gaps were filled. So our first job is to find those gaps — precisely, child by child — and start to fill them.
The thing about maths is that you need each building block in place to make sense of what comes next. Miss a month of history and you might miss the Romans, but the Victorians still make sense. Miss a few weeks of algebra, and everything that follows stops making sense. Maths learning is so sequential.
For care-experienced learners, that’s the situation many arrive at by GCSE. Around 1 in 3 children in care in Years 10–13 are moved home during those years — over 15,000 children — and 1 in 8 change school or college; for many, that disruption falls inside the exam period itself.1
The broader evidence on placement instability tracks straight into exam outcomes. Among children generally, 65% of those who never move home between Reception and Year 11 achieve five GCSE passes including English and Maths, compared with just 11% of those who move ten or more times.2 Care-experienced learners often sit at the far end of that curve. Only around 1 in 6 children who have been in need in the last six years achieves a grade 5 or above in GCSE English and Maths, compared with nearly half of the overall pupil population.3 Among children looked after by local authorities, the historic gap has been starker still — roughly six times lower than peers.3
We believe numeracy skills are a key lever of social mobility. A single grade improvement at GCSE Maths is worth around £14,500 in today’s-value lifetime earnings4 — and many more grade improvements are possible when a learner’s actual gaps are met head-on.
Three things that have to work together.
We’re breaking GCSE maths down into its smallest building blocks and mapping every child precisely onto it. The aim is to find the specific gaps that hold a learner back — the ones a flat assessment can’t see — and then build a path that targets exactly those, child by child.
Across the three-year window from Year 9 to GCSE exams, we’re building a tutor that adjusts mode and difficulty to the learner — teaching a concept, asking the learner to teach it back, or offering an easy win when the right move is to rebuild a little confidence before pushing on. Recent randomised trials suggest learners with access to AI tutors can learn more, in less time, and feel more engaged and motivated.5 Students also report a substantial reduction in maths anxiety when using AI tools6 — which matters, because maths anxiety is a significant predictor of maths attainment.7 8 9 Every mathematical output the platform produces is checked for accuracy before it reaches a child.
We’re building the platform around what works for the people supporting the child. An up-to-date picture of each learner’s engagement, time on task, progress, and gaps — written in language that drops straight into PEP meetings, statutory reporting, and Ofsted evidence. Designated Teachers and PEP caseworkers can pull an individual report in three clicks; Virtual School Heads can pull a cohort report the same way. No setup, no extra admin. It’s a resource to use if and when you need it.
Built to be safe, secure, and properly governed. We’re designing toward UK GDPR and Cyber Essentials compliance, with safeguarding embedded from the start.
We’re building STEMeUp with the people who’ll use it:
And for the children themselves — every one of them sitting their GCSEs in two or three years’ time, who deserves a fair shot at the grade they’re capable of.
We’re rolling out across the North East first, beginning with Durham, before scaling nationally.
We’re pre-build and actively shaping STEMeUp with the people who’ll use it. If you’d like to pilot it with your school or local authority, are interested in early access, or have something we should hear before we build it — please get in touch. Giammarco (our Founder) will read your message and reply.
Thanks — your message is with us. We’ll be in touch within a few working days.