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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-

The start of a new year invites reflection. Not resolutions for their own sake, but a chance to be clear about what really matters — and what we are choosing to double down on. For us at Starlight, that word is trust . Trust is not a feature. It is not a setting. It is the foundation everything else stands on. And as we move into 2026, we want to say clearly and publicly: trust will remain the first principle on which Starlight is built. Why trust matters — especially in scho

In 2007, the surgeon and writer Atul Gawande published a book called Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance. It is not a book about technology. It is not even really a book about medicine. It is a book about what it means to improve in complex, high-stakes professions where the work matters deeply and the margin for error is slim. Nearly two decades on, Better remains quietly radical — and surprisingly relevant to education. Gawande’s central claim is deceptively simple: ex

On the 21st of December, we reach the shortest day of the year and the longest night. For centuries, people have marked this moment with hope — because from here, the light returns. It is no accident that Christmas sits here, at the darkest point. And it is no accident that the central symbol of the season is a star. A star above a stable. A star at the top of a tree. A small light that helps people find their way. This feels like the right moment to pause and to take stock

One of the hardest problems in professional development is not insight — it’s trust. Teachers are rightly cautious about anything that looks like observation, evaluation, or performance management dressed up as support. And yet, schools also know that some of their greatest untapped potential lies in something far simpler: Understanding and sharing the strengths that already exist within their teams . This tension is what led us to build the Starlight Teaching Strengths StarM

Across the sector, one message keeps resurfacing in Ofsted reports and leadership briefings: schools are expected to use digital technologies intelligently  to strengthen teaching, improve professional development, and secure better outcomes for pupils. Ofsted’s inspection toolkit — which explains how the EIF is applied in schools — highlights the importance of using resources, including digital technologies , to support pupils’ progress and outcomes. “Ensure that the curricu

Today, we’re launching what we believe is the most important upgrade to Starlight to date. It’s called My Teaching Journey  — a living, evolving map of your professional growth that turns everyday reflection into a clear, coherent story of how your practice is changing over time. For the first time, teachers can see  their development: the patterns, the strengths, the shifts in focus, and the tiny adjustments that add up to real impact. Not as a score. Not as a judgement. But

Starlight has just added a small but powerful upgrade: six new audio subcategories  you can select when uploading any recording. The default remains Lesson , so nothing changes for everyday use. But if you click the category drop-down, you can now choose a more specific type of session — allowing Starlight to generate the right feedback automatically, without needing to run another template. This makes the system more intelligent, more context-aware, and better aligned with t

When we first launched Observations  earlier this year, our goal was simple: to bring every strand of professional dialogue — from personalised and private AI coaching feedback and formal observations to informal reflections — into one secure, teacher-first space. Now, after months of collaboration and feedback from schools across the UK, that feature has taken a major leap forward. The latest upgrade makes Observations not only easier to use, but far more powerful as a whole

There’s something special about growth that doesn’t come from a marketing budget — but from teachers talking. From one conversation in a staffroom. From a colleague’s recommendation over coffee. From a mentor saying, “You should try this.” That’s how Starlight is growing. What started as a small idea in one school in the West of England has quietly begun to spread. Without campaigns or adverts, more schools are finding their way to us — through word-of-mouth, through trust, a