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We have published the first edition of Starlight Quarterly, our new newsletter for the Starlight community. This issue covers a lot of ground. We introduce the concept of mining the transcript and why every recording is more valuable than most schools realise. We spotlight three new coaching templates, including Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction, the Great Teaching Toolkit suite and a dedicated Careers Guidance template. We share practical guidance on getting the most fr

On Sunday evening, four astronauts aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft flew around the far side of the Moon during their lunar flyby and pointed a camera back towards home. What they captured has stopped the world mid-scroll. A crescent Earth, impossibly delicate, rising above the battered lunar horizon. The Sun’s corona blazing behind the Moon’s dark edge during a near hour-long solar eclipse witnessed from lunar distance. Craters and ridges of the far side captured in extraordin

One of the most common questions we receive from school leaders considering Starlight is a simple one: what do the unions think? It is a fair and important question. Any technology that involves teachers recording their own lessons deserves careful scrutiny, and union representatives are right to ask hard questions about how that data is used, who has access to it, and whether teachers' professional integrity is protected. We have always believed that if Starlight is genuinel

One year ago today, STAR21 Limited was incorporated. Three co-founders, a clear problem to solve, and a belief that teachers deserve feedback that is specific, timely, actionable and regular. Twelve months on, it feels right to pause, take stock, and share where the journey has taken us so far. From classrooms to Companies House Starlight did not begin as a company. It began as a frustration. As a senior leader responsible for teaching, learning and coaching, I knew the probl

In 1995, NASA pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a patch of sky so small it would be covered by a grain of sand held at arm's length. To the naked eye, there was nothing there. After ten days of continuous exposure, something extraordinary came back: nearly 3,000 galaxies, some of the oldest and most distant ever observed, all hidden in what had appeared to be empty darkness. The Hubble Deep Field did not show scientists something new about the universe. It showed them som

The Education Select Committee has launched a new inquiry examining how artificial intelligence and EdTech are reshaping education across England. The Committee is seeking written evidence on the benefits, challenges and risks of AI adoption in schools, colleges and universities, with a deadline of 10 April 2026. STAR21 co-founder Adam Sturdee, who is also a serving assistant headteacher, has submitted written evidence drawing on his dual perspective as a school leader and a

One of the most common frustrations for careers advisers is not the conversation itself. It is the paperwork afterwards. A meaningful guidance conversation with a student can last twenty or thirty minutes. It can explore aspirations, uncertainties, qualifications, family influences, and possible pathways. Yet afterwards the adviser often faces another fifteen or twenty minutes typing up notes, summarising decisions, and writing action plans that need to be shared with tutors,

Over the past six months, Starlight has evolved quickly. We have added the Teacher Journey. We have introduced Development Actions. We have expanded custom templates. We have built the Constellation dashboard for leaders. And we have launched the Lesson Toolkit to reduce teacher workload. Each addition has been guided by one principle: make feedback specific, timely, actionable and regular — at scale. As the platform has grown, so has the need for clarity. New features bring

Today I presented at the SOPHIA Network's online meeting — the European Foundation for the Advancement of Doing Philosophy with Children — as part of a session exploring AI as a tool for P4C practitioners. The session, titled Listening Back to Thinking , makes a straightforward argument: spoken dialogue disappears the moment a lesson ends, and unassisted reflection is shaped more by memory than by what actually happened. A transcript changes what's available. Used well, AI ca

Over the past year, as Starlight has grown across schools, one theme has come up repeatedly in conversations with senior leaders: we are asking more of early career teachers than ever before, while the system around them is becoming structurally thinner. The new Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework, now sitting under the Early Career Teacher Entitlement, has rightly raised expectations. It has clarified content. It has strengthened areas such as adaptive teachi

Across the UK, schools are drafting AI policies at pace. Most begin with student use. Safeguarding. Academic integrity. Detection tools. These are important. But they are not the right starting point. If AI policy in schools does not prioritise professional learning first, it risks becoming restrictive rather than transformative. This matters because AI is not simply another classroom tool. It is a cognitive technology. It shapes thinking. And if teachers and leaders do not u

Recently, we had the privilege of a searching, generous conversation with colleagues from a leading UK university about the future of AI in teacher development. They were enthusiastic about the potential of transcript-based lesson analysis to deepen reflection. They were also clear-eyed about the risks. Their questions centred on something subtle but profound: If AI works by identifying patterns, does it quietly push us towards the middle of the bell curve? And if so, what mi

The first two years of teaching shape everything that follows, not because they are flawless or neatly structured, but because they are formative in the truest sense. I have worked with enough Early Career Teachers to know that this period is rarely smooth. It is energising and full of possibility, yet also demanding in ways that are difficult to articulate until you are standing alone in your own classroom for the first time. The responsibility arrives quickly. The decisions

We are delighted to share that we has been invited to contribute to this year’s online annual meeting of the SOPHIA Network , the European Foundation for the Advancement of Philosophy with Children, hosted in partnership with Thoughtful . The session will take place on 28th February, bringing together practitioners and researchers from across Europe to explore the relationship between philosophy, dialogue, and artificial intelligence. You can find out more here: https://www.s

One of the quiet but significant shifts in the 2025/26 Ofsted Education Inspection Framework  is this: inspection is no longer about how well schools prepare . It is about how well they are set up . Across the new framework, inspectors are placing greater weight on inclusion as a golden thread, on sustained professional learning rather than one-off CPD, and on leadership cultures that protect staff wellbeing and reduce administrative burden. Evidence matters, but not in the f

Last week, we stood on the exhibition floor at BETT 2026 for the first time as a company. Not as an idea. Not as a prototype quietly tested behind the scenes. But as STAR21, the company behind Starlight, open to conversation, challenge, curiosity and, most importantly, real users. It is hard to overstate what that moment meant for us. Listening before speaking From the moment the doors opened each morning, the conversations came thick and fast. Classroom teachers. Heads of de

When we first piloted Starlight, we assumed the conversations would centre on efficiency, data and insight. Those things matter, of course. But schools used the platform consistently over an extended period and gathered staff feedback, something else came through far more strongly. What teachers talked about most was not speed or sophistication. It was how the feedback made them feel, and how it changed the way they thought about their teaching. This post reflects on aggregat

Over the past year, two rigorous, peer-reviewed studies have quietly changed what we can say with confidence about AI coaching in schools. Not opinion pieces. Not vendor case studies. Randomised controlled trials, run in real classrooms, with real teachers. Together, they answer a question many school leaders and teachers are rightly asking: Does AI-generated feedback actually improve teaching practice? The answer, based on the best evidence we now have, is yes. The Stanford

There is a temptation, when a new coaching tool arrives in a school, to treat it like a shortcut. Upload a lesson. Receive a report. Tick a box. Move on. But one school I spoke to recently is doing something far more interesting. They are using Starlight as a mirror, not a measure. And in doing so, they are quietly building a mentoring programme that blends human professional judgement with AI insight in a way that feels calm, safe, and genuinely developmental. I am sharing t

One of the most common questions we’re asked about Starlight is a fair one: “Is there any serious research showing that AI feedback can actually improve teaching?” The answer is yes — and some of the most compelling evidence comes from Stanford University. In this post, we want to briefly outline a Stanford-led research trial and explain why its findings matter so directly for what we’re building with Starlight. The Stanford Study in Brief Researchers at Stanford ran a large-