Stylus Education

Calling all primary → secondary transition leads, English leads and Year 7 teachers.

The move from primary to secondary is a pivotal moment for students—yet it's often when vital insight about their writing can be hard to unearth.

🎉So this summer, we're running our Year 6 → Year 7 transition offer again, free for every participating school.

It's super simple to implement, yet incredibly insightful.

Here's how it works:

• Your incoming pupils write on 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 sheets during their transition day (or with their Year 6 teacher).

• You scan and email the sheets to us, and we mark them.

• We create a personalised summer task booklet for your new Year 7 cohort, built around the writing gaps our AI identifies.

• Year 7 teachers start September with a class-level report—strengths, areas to develop—plus a dashboard to explore deeper into individuals.

💡It's a head start on knowing exactly where your new cohort is, before they walk through the door.

Completely free.

Register your interest here and one of our team will be in touch. https://bit.ly/4dUdAQp

Nearly two years ago, we met InMAT at PiXL MAT Connect.

At the time, 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 was still in its earliest stages, and InMAT became one of our first discovery partners: asking important questions, testing the service in real school contexts, and helping shape what it’s become today.

Since then, they‘ve worked with us as 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 has grown into a rigorous marking and feedback service used by more schools and trusts as their writing improvement partner.

And this year, Simon Blight, School Improvement Lead at the 9-school trust, shared the impact of a full year using our service:

“The Year 6 writing progress outstrips any other year group. The only thing we did differently this year was give them 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬.”

This is why we value industry events like the PiXL Primary and Secondary National Conferences so much.

The conversations, questions and collaborations that begin at events like these can shape products, partnerships and, ultimately, outcomes for pupils.

They have certainly shaped us.

We’re looking forward to being back with the PiXL community this year: talking about writing, assessment, workload, and how schools and trusts can understand progress more clearly through rigorous marking, feedback and granular insight at scale.

If you’re heading to the PiXL Primary or Secondary National Conference, come and say hello. We’d love to hear what has changed in your schools over the last year, what is working well, and what challenges you are thinking about next.

Find out more about our work with InMAT in the case study on our website: https://bit.ly/3Qd6b70

We're pleased to announce our Year 6 → Year 7 transition offer is running again this summer!

It's completely free for all schools to access.

Here's how it works:

• Sign up and we'll send you a set of 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 sheets for your Year 6s to write on during their transition day (or with their Year 6 teacher).

• Scan and email the sheets back to us—we'll mark them.

• We'll create a personalised summer task booklet for your incoming Year 7 cohort (built around the writing gaps our AI identifies)

• Year 7 teachers start the year with a class-level report—strengths, areas to improve, plus a dashboard to explore individual marking.

Register your interest here→ https://bit.ly/3RWFGDh

One of our team will be in touch.

The e-Assessment Association International Conference and Awards is the premier platform for exploring how technology is transforming assessment, learning, and credentialing.

The e-assessment Awards are taking place on Tuesday next week.🎉They’re a global celebration of excellence, innovation, and impact in digital learning and assessment. Each year, the Awards shine a spotlight on the pioneers, innovators, and changemakers shaping the future of education and assessment technology.

And this year, team 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 are delighted to be recognised and shortlisted for the AI in Marking Award!

With every single nomination, shortlisting and award win we shine a light on the absolute true potential of what we are building at 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬.

Not only this, but 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 CEO and Founder, Dominic Bristow will be leading a session in the AI Symposium at 4pm today:

When the AI Disagrees with the teacher: Building Trust & Accuracy Through Transparent Disagreement Review

Will you be there? Let us know in the comments.

And, if you’d like to find out more about the services we offer at 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬, book a call with one of our team here, we’d love to talk to you. 👇

https://𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬.education/book-a-demo

If we could prioritise one writing misconception across your trust for September, it would be this 👇

the run-on sentence (and we don’t just mean for Year 6).

Yes, run-on sentences are costing otherwise proficient writers their Expected Standard, but it’s a misconception that begins to take shape long before any KS2 classroom door is opened.

Sentence formation is formally introduced from the beginning of KS1—so why is this skill still insecure 6 years later?

Across hundreds of class-level teacher reports, it’s been the most common problem that we’ve flagged: children are using capital letters and full stops; they just don't understand where one sentence ends and the next begins.

The missing piece? Children don't yet have a secure concept of what constitutes 'one complete thought'.

The fix is not more grammar worksheets—it's revisiting the basics:

What is a sentence?
What is a clause?
What is a phrase?

If children can't identify where one complete thought ends and the next begins, no amount of fronted adverbials or embedded clauses will land securely.

Before we teach pupils to write complex sentences, we need to make sure they truly understand what is needed for a simple one. And that's not a Year 2 or a Year 6 job—it's a whole-school conversation.

Each month we expose the insights we’re seeing now across 1000s of pieces of writing in our newsletter ✏️On The Mark.

Join hundreds of other trust CEOs, Headteachers, Leaders, and teachers who are the first to get our insights, 5-Minute Fix videos and writing improvement questions answered by subscribing to our newsletter here: https://bit.ly/4v4O0ix

📍Save the date: Wednesday 1 July. FREE CPD event.

Join us for the first event in our new 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 seminar series with special guest Dr Tim Mills (MBE).

We’re designing it as an intimate session for school and trust leaders who are thinking seriously about writing, assessment and the role AI can play in improving outcomes. Hosted in London Kings Cross, expect practical discussions, live insights from our work with schools, and time for proper conversation with peers.

Places will be very limited - register your interest here: https://bit.ly/49CH6c9

It’s the regional final of the UK StartUp Awards tonight and team 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 have been shortlisted for Best Education & Training StartUp🎉

Education is changing quickly, and we’re proud to be building a practical, responsible and genuinely useful AI service which supports teachers, leaders and CEOs in improving writing through granular level insight at scale.

A huge thank you to our team, our partner schools, and everyone who has supported 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 on the journey so far.

KS2 writing moderation visits begin across the country today.

Moderators are looking for teachers who can talk confidently about the evidence behind their teacher assessment judgements.

That evidence has to come from the full range of a pupil’s writing, alongside the teacher’s knowledge of how that work was produced: how independent it was, what support was given, what the pupil intended, and how effectively the writing works for a reader.

That is why 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 is designed as a formative assessment service, not a summative judgement tool.

We do not tell teachers whether a pupil is Working Towards, Expected Standard or Greater Depth. That judgement belongs with the teacher.

What we do is help teachers see the writing in more detail.

In 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 schools, each piece of submitted writing is analysed against a broad set of writing criteria mapped to the Teacher Assessment Framework, giving teachers a sentence-level view of strengths, gaps and emerging evidence.

This insight helps teachers identify where a pupil has shown a particular skill, where further evidence may be needed, and where a class or group may need more focused teaching.

In a moderation conversation, that matters because teachers are not being asked to defend the output of an AI model. Instead they are being asked to explain their professional judgement.

𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 supports that professional judgement by making the evidence easier to find, reflect on and discuss.

The judgement is always the teacher’s.

Our job is to give them clearer insight into the writing that sits behind it.

When moderation day comes for 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 schools, we're confident that it's a conversation teachers are ready to lead.

It’s not long now until the MAT Excellence awards where the 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐮𝐬 team have been shortlisted for both Company of the Year and Product of the Year.

The team behind stylus are 80% ex-teachers who are dedicated to improving education for both teachers and pupils alike.

Award nominations like these mean a lot to us.

We cannot wait until June 11th for another excuse to celebrate the team's impact on education.