“What can we say – it’s just a no-brainer! An amazing package, unbelievably personalised to our students and has highlighted the huge benefits to all our children, and especially our children with SEND. WE LOVE IT!”

Peter Chapman – Headteacher at St George’s Primary School

Project Overview

Liverpool Region Mayor Steve Rotherham first saw CENTURY’s powerful AI-driven teaching and learning platform in action in a school in London. Driven by the desire to eradicate education inequality across the region, Mayor Rotheram wanted to give the children of Liverpool access to “cutting edge AI technology … to raise standards across the region and give local children access to opportunities usually enjoyed by elite private school students.”

To make this happen, CENTURY organised a launch event with the help of Runnymede St. Edward’s Catholic Primary School to introduce school leaders in the Liverpool region to the platform. The event allowed educators to hear first hand from teachers and students who had used CENTURY and meant buy-in came from the schools themselves and was informed by impact. Students and teachers shared their experiences, which were captured by the BBC. 

Following the launch event, CENTURY promptly engaged with schools that registered their interest. Initial launch emails outlined the next steps, including onboarding details and scheduling training sessions. 41 schools proceeded with a pilot, selected their objectives and whether they wanted to focus on specific classes, year groups, or take other approaches. 

Training

Once all schools were onboarded, CENTURY delivered tailored training sessions, either online or in-person, to meet the needs of each school. These ranged from sessions for individual pilot teachers to full-staff training. The training was designed to:

• Introduce the platform and its features, such as the diagnostics that help to kick start CENTURY’s AI by identifying students’s areas of strength and weakness. Students can then continue learning using their Recommended Path, which will recommend nuggets (micro-lessons) based on what they need to study next. 
• Build teacher confidence in using CENTURY effectively. Teachers were shown how to access the Markbook in the Teacher Dashboard to track student progress and tailor their lessons without having to mark hundreds of questions. They were also shown how to set assignments to learners if they spot a class-wide misconception and want to use CENTURY to remedy this either in class or as homework.

This flexible approach ensured that all participants were well-prepared to maximise the impact of CENTURY.

Ongoing Support

Throughout the initiative, schools had access to dedicated support for all their needs, from content-related questions to technical platform queries. Whether it was troubleshooting or onboarding additional staff and students, we provided swift and comprehensive assistance, ensuring a seamless experience.

To keep schools informed and engaged, CENTURY sent weekly usage updates to school leads every week. These updates were used in a variety of ways, from monitoring activity levels to celebrating student achievements in assemblies and rewarding learners for their efforts.

CENTURY’s Impact

“Our parents and pupils LOVE CENTURY! We’ve had huge levels of engagement, including from some previously difficult to reach families. We love the platform and would love to keep using it as it’s having a huge impact on children’s recall of prior knowledge.”

Matt Power – Shoreside Primary School

“Our teachers appreciate how easy it is to us as well as how low maintenance it is for homework. The students have provided positive feedback and enjoy using the platform. For them, the learning content is so engaging that it doesn’t feel like work. Parents like the fact it can support them with their children’s homework.”

Dave Wallace – Headteacher at St Peter’s C of E Primary School

Impact on students

Over 4,000 students actively engaged with CENTURY between 30th September and 18th December, completing over 80,000 nuggets (micro-lessons) and answering over a million questions. Learners also accessed their Student Dashboard over 30,000 times, evidencing their enthusiasm to direct their learning based on CENTURY’s insights. Students showed an incredible average improvement of 10% between their first and second attempt at a nugget, demonstrating tangible learning gains in a short timeframe.

Impact on teachers

Teachers set over 1,200 assignments, freeing up approximately 1,800 hours – an average of over 9 1⁄2 hours’ time saved per teacher, which can instead be spent focussing on improving student outcomes. CENTURY’s data insights were accessed nearly 24,000 times, allowing teachers to tailor their lessons to the needs of the whole class.

A survey completed by participating teachers was overwhelmingly positive, with 100% of respondents saying they would like to continue using CENTURY. Reactions were also extremely enthusiastic with all participants either strongly agreeing or agreeing that:

• The learning resources on CENTURY were high quality, effective and personalised to the learner
• Students were engaged while using CENTURY
• CENTURY helped support our learners to progress
• CENTURY reduced teacher workload and provided actionable insights

Conclusion & Next Steps

The pilot demonstrates the power for change when schools, supported by regional structures, are given access to AI-powered tools. Staff and students throughout the schools immediately and meaningfully engaged with AI, empowering teachers and improving outcomes for learners.

The combination of AI-recommended and the teacher-assigned micro-lessons ensured that pupils received a personalised learning experience that was matched to curriculum objectives, leading to a significant improvement.

Finally, teachers save an extraordinary amount of time on marking and are able to tailor their lessons more effectively when they have access to powerful interventions data.

The Liverpool region is currently funding schools in order to support them to continue to build on the success that we’ve already seen. This is just the start of the project and we are excited to continue the project to show impact in the long term.

Success Stories

Students really enjoy using CENTURY. They find the layout engaging and like that they can explore different areas of the curriculum. They also benefit from seeing and hearing concepts explained in multiple ways, reinforcing their understanding. Two greater depth pupils in particular have really taken to CENTURY and use it to push themselves further. On the other hand, another student working below the national curriculum level, has also found CENTURY beneficial. We’ve been able to assign her Year 3 and 4 work to help bridge the gap, and she has really engaged with it. All Saints Anfield Primary School 

We have a specific student in Year 5 working at a Year 3 level who is really benefiting. He struggles with retaining information particularly. We have used CENTURY’s personalised recommendations and nuggets to support their learning, tailoring the content to their specific needs. It really helps that this student can revisit learning regularly to help them embed it in their long-term memory. St Thomas of Canterbury Catholic School

For more information about how to embed CENTURY in your primary school, click here. If you’d like to see a demonstration of the platform, click here. If you already use CENTURY in your school and want to learn more about any of the usage models mentioned above, contact your Account Manager or email support@century.tech.