How Rossall School Uses AI-Powered CENTURY to Personalise Learning and Significantly Reduce Teacher Workload

Matt Turner, Head of Prep School at Rossall School, discusses how adopting CENTURY has supplemented their educational offering by providing highly individualised learning pathways for pupils and delivering outstanding data to reduce teacher workload.

How do you use CENTURY at Rossall School?

We predominantly use the platform across Years 4 to 6 for English and maths. We initially used it strictly for our homework / prep, but as we began to see the true power of what it was capable of achieving, we integrated it directly into our classrooms. It serves as a highly effective tool for providing stretch and challenge tasks for some pupils, and acts almost like an additional teaching assistant to support specific intervention groups. To maintain a balanced approach to learning, we set one CENTURY session per week for homework, alongside one or two targeted sessions in school. We value the human aspect of teaching immensely, and CENTURY does a huge amount of the legwork to support that relationship rather than attempt to replace it.

“The immediate feedback from our staff is that it significantly reduces workload.”

Matt Turner, Head of Prep School, Rossall School

In what ways has the platform’s AI helped to personalise learning for your students?

The AI adaptation provides teacher-level intervention right at the point of need, which is absolutely outstanding. If a child does not quite understand a concept, the platform automatically takes them back, explains it, and provides easier questions before returning to the original level. Conversely, for our gifted and talented pupils, it instantly recognises their proficiency and provides more complicated material to stretch them further.

A prime example is a pupil who recently joined us from Japan with a very low level of English. The AI quickly realised this and completely shifted to put together a highly individualised plan to support his English development. Having a tool that seamlessly sets tailored comprehension and classwork completely distinct from where the rest of the class is operating is massive.

What impact has CENTURY had on teacher workload and teaching practices?

The immediate feedback from our staff is that it significantly reduces workload. Due to the fact that the teachers are not marking the work by hand, they can spend that time looking at the incredibly rich data the platform provides. This fantastic data enables quick-fire, individual target setting without the need to trawl through exercise books. It has enhanced our teaching practices in several specific ways:

• Targeted intervention: We utilise the data to deploy rapid interventions, ensuring small groups fully grasp a concept before the rest of the class moves on with the main curriculum.
• Data-driven planning: We dedicate some of our inset and CPD time to actively analysing this data, correlating it with our other internal assessments to formulate the best approach for individual pupil journeys.
• Strategic assessment: Instead of simply oversetting work, we focus on assigning more diagnostic testing, giving the AI the chance to accurately place children exactly where they need to be.

How have pupils and parents responded to the platform?

The children are highly engaged, and I firmly believe its purely educational, non-gamified design is a core strength. If CENTURY had relied on avatars or endorphin-releasing gaming elements, we simply would not have adopted it. It is a sophisticated, grown-up programme, therefore our prep pupils feel they are being invested in. They actively challenge themselves; if they do not score as well as they could have, they independently go back and address their errors to achieve top marks. Furthermore, the short, snappy nature of the learning nuggets is highly effective. The reading comprehensions, for instance, are appropriately sized, successfully building vital inference skills without keeping children glued to a screen for half an hour.

What advice would you give to other schools looking to maximise their use of CENTURY?

You need to have somebody in your school who is a dedicated champion of CENTURY. It is vital to have staff members who clearly see the virtues of using AI in education and can effectively train the rest of the team to utilise the platform towards its vast potential. The potential for CENTURY is enormous, and schools that invest time in understanding the tool and training their staff will get the absolute most out of the platform.

Book a demo to see how CENTURY can transform teaching and learning at your institution.

If you’re already a customer, contact your Account Manager or email support@century.tech.