We are proud to be participating in the EdTech R&D Programme, a partnership programme between Nesta and the Department for Education. The programme aims to support schools and EdTech organisations to better understand the needs of their users and develop innovative new ways to remove barriers for learners facing additional challenges.
We’re working with a small group of schools to improve our platform further to better serve the needs of disadvantaged families.


Why now?
The pandemic has shone an even brighter light on the need to effectively support parents to be confident and empowered to engage in their children’s learning. However, the challenges and inequalities that have been highlighted are not confined to the pandemic; they require long term solutions.
As a charity focused on supporting parents in disadvantaged communities, we are excited by the opportunity to develop our programme further to support more families and make it easier for them to get involved.
What are we going to be doing?
We will be making our programme more accessible for all parents by introducing phone number logins. We understand that not all parents regularly use email but 97% of parent-aged adults have a mobile. By introducing phone number logins, will be able to support more families to register.
We have also been working with the University of Chicago to explore behavioural insights around how we can best support disadvantaged families to regularly access our activities and engage in their child’s learning. This has shown us the potential impact of introducing text message nudges to improve engagement. Through the EdTech R&D programme we are implementing text message reminders and exploring the impact of these nudges to increase parents’ engagement in their child’s learning at our partner schools.
Find out more about the EdTech R&D programme here: https://bit.ly/2YDHXUX