Stylus Education

20/08/2026

Two teachers can read the same piece of writing and reach different conclusions. Every teacher and leader knows consistency is one of the biggest challenges in assessing writing. It's also why specificity matters.

When assessment criteria leave room for interpretation, consistency becomes difficult to achieve. The more precisely a criterion is defined, the more consistently it can be applied—by teachers and by AI alike.

In this article, our 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 Senior Curriculum Advisor, KassiElla Rankine, explores why specificity sits at the heart of reliable writing assessment, and why rigorous AI starts long before any model assesses a single sentence.

Read the full article: https://bit.ly/4b5Vv1k

Your AI-powered partner for assessing English Writing. Super-granular diagnosis & more time to act on it. Learn more

18/08/2026

“Show, don’t tell” is familiar advice, but pupils often need a clear route into what that actually means on the page. In this 5-Minute Fix, Hannah Gillott, 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 Director of Schools, models a practical way to help pupils move beyond naming an emotion and towards describing the physical details that allow a reader to infer it.

Using anger as the example, Hannah shows how pupils can build a bank of precise details—facial expression, movement, body language and physical reactions—before choosing the ones that best fit the context of their writing. The focus is not on adding more description for the sake of it, but on helping pupils make deliberate choices about what to include.

It is a useful model for supporting pupils to write with more control when developing character and emotion.

Watch the video here and save it to use in September:
https://bit.ly/4bgjBXl

There are 3 ways you could use the video: as part of your own CPD, as part of school-wide CPD or directly with pupils in class as an additional teaching resource.

If you find this useful, join our ✏️On The Mark newsletter where we share a brand-new 5-Minute Fix every month:

https://bit.ly/4bMcEgI

In this video, Director of Schools Hannah Gillott models an exercis...

13/08/2026

As more schools adopt AI, the conversation is changing: it's no longer just about what an AI tool can do. Schools also need to understand what happens to their data, how student work is protected, and what questions to ask before introducing AI into the classroom.

In this article, our 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 Director of Schools, Hannah Gillott, explores the practical considerations every school should have on its procurement checklist—from data protection and student intellectual property to transparency from AI providers.

For school leaders, these aren't ‘just technical details’, they're an essential part of making informed decisions about the tools we choose to use with pupils.

Read the full article:
https://bit.ly/4wheq1R

Your AI-powered partner for assessing English Writing. Super-granular diagnosis & more time to act on it. Learn more

12/08/2026

As we continue developing 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬, it's important that our thinking is tested by the people leading schools and trusts every day—people who understand the practical realities, ask difficult questions, and can see where deeper insight into writing could make the greatest difference.

As such, we're delighted to welcome our newest member, Matt Morris, to the 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 Advisory Board. Matt is CEO of TEAM Multi-Academy Trust, bringing extensive experience in school leadership, trust development and improving education across rural communities. In our most recent meeting, Matt immediately stood out for the calibre of his thinking—pairing real classroom insight with a sharp strategic perspective on where an edtech company like ours should be heading.

He pushed our thinking on what it really means to be an improvement partner rather than just a product or service, pointing to models like Steplab's cluster hubs as an example of bringing schools together in a way that strengthens both community and product—something our community director, Milly will be leading this coming academic year. Watch this space.

And when we shared an early prototype of "Ask 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬," our new AI-powered insight tool, Matt highlighted the challenge we’re trying to solve: teachers need help spotting trends. We need to go much further than just answering questions they don’t yet know to ask.

Matt's perspective as a trust CEO will bring valuable challenge, experience and strategic insight to our work.

11/08/2026

Many pupils learn to identify a grammatical feature before they understand how to use it as writers. Passive voice is a good example. A pupil might be able to spot it in a sentence, or even construct it from active voice, but that does not necessarily mean they understand why a writer would choose it.

That distinction matters because when pupils understand the effect of a grammatical choice and how to construct it, they are more able to use it deliberately: to shift attention, foreground the person or thing being affected, or make the focus of a sentence fit the purpose of the wider piece.

In part 2 of this 5-Minute Fix, Hannah Gillott, 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 Director of Schools, models how pupils can think about the choice between active and passive voice by asking two questions: who or what should be the star of the sentence, and what effect is the writer trying to achieve?
It is a practical model for moving pupils beyond grammatical identification and towards more controlled, purposeful writing.

Watch part 2 here: https://bit.ly/4pIVKFD

If you find this video useful, join our ✏️On The Mark newsletter where we share a brand-new 5-Minute Fix every month:

https://bit.ly/3RVrNWm

In this video, Director of Schools Hannah Gillott explores when to ...

06/08/2026

As classrooms become increasingly digital, it's easy to assume handwriting matters less. Yet, research suggests the opposite. In this article, our 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 Senior Curriculum Advisor, KassiElla Rankine, explores the evidence behind handwriting's role in learning, why legibility matters more than neatness, and how technology can help us assess writing more fairly without losing the educational benefits of writing by hand.

It's a thoughtful perspective on the place of handwriting in modern classrooms—and a reminder that innovation in education isn't about replacing effective practice, but strengthening it.

Read the article here:
https://bit.ly/3R4cjPB

Your AI-powered partner for assessing English Writing. Super-granular diagnosis & more time to act on it. Learn more

05/08/2026

We're big believers in an Advisory Board built to challenge, test and shape the future direction of 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬. So we've brought together a group willing to do exactly that—among them Helen Williams, Chief Executive Officer of InMAT.

Helen brings more than 25 years in education, starting as a primary school teacher before progressing through headship, executive headship and trust leadership.

At a recent board meeting, Helen didn't tell us what we wanted to hear. She pressed hard on the risk that technology like ours could erode teacher expertise rather than build it—and on the danger that a service handing over a ready-made answer stops teachers asking the better question.

That caution went to the heart of what the whole board challenged us on: 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 must never be sold as a silver bullet, and the teacher has to stay at the centre of everything. We're consistently building to that standard—insights that prompt a teacher's thinking, with the evidence trail front and centre, rather than a verdict handed down.

As we keep developing 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬, we want our thinking challenged by leaders who understand both the strategic demands of running a trust and the daily realities facing schools. Helen's depth of primary and trust leadership experience brings exactly that scrutiny.

04/08/2026

Passive voice is often taught as something pupils need to identify and use, but understanding how to construct the passive voice from active voice can be a stumbling block for some pupils.

In this 5-Minute Fix, Hannah Gillott, 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 Director of Schools, expertly demonstrates how to construct the passive voice from the active voice, retelling a sentence from the perspective of the object.

It is a practical model for helping pupils move beyond spotting a grammatical feature and instead towards understanding it and using it confidently in their own writing.

Watch the video here: https://bit.ly/4yNjfBE

There are 3 ways you could use the video: as part of your own CPD, as part of school-wide CPD or directly with pupils in class as an additional teaching resource.

If you find this useful, join our ✏️On the Mark newsletter where we share a brand-new 5-Minute fix every month: https://bit.ly/4pB7fPp

30/07/2026

Many pupils can tell you that a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. Ask them what a sentence is, and the answer is often far less clear. That's a problem because until pupils understand that a sentence needs a subject, a verb and a main clause, they're often relying on punctuation alone to decide where one sentence ends and the next begins.

In this article, our 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 Senior Curriculum Advisor, KassiElla Rankine, explores why explicitly teaching sentence structure matters, the common misconceptions teachers see time and time again, and why addressing the root cause leads to better writing than simply correcting the same errors repeatedly.

It's a practical, insightful read for anyone teaching writing.

Read the full article here:

Your AI-powered partner for assessing English Writing. Super-granular diagnosis & more time to act on it. Learn more

28/07/2026

If punctuation has been one of the things you’ve found yourself correcting most often this year, you are not alone. Across the pieces of writing we’ve marked over the last year, basic punctuation makes up much of the top 5 most common EBIs. One of the many tricky areas is possessive apostrophes: not just whether pupils have used them, but whether they can check that the apostrophe is in the right place.

In this video Director of Schools, Hannah Gillott, models a simple yet effective way for pupils to check whether a possessive apostrophe is correctly placed, supporting them in both their editing and punctuation use.

https://bit.ly/4py2Uwp

Every month we share a new 5-Minute Fix in ✏️ On The Mark, our newsletter for leaders and teachers invested in improving writing. Join us here: https://bit.ly/4wUAyyD

stylus Director of Schools Hannah Gillott shares a trick for checki...