One Year In: STAR21 Turns One

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 problem intimately: the gap between what the research says about effective professional development and what schools can actually deliver. Coaching works. The evidence is clear. But it does not scale through traditional observation. The time is not there. The capacity is not there. The frequency is not there.

The insight that changed everything was deceptively simple. Every lesson is already a rich source of professional learning. The problem is that once the lesson ends, the detail disappears. A transcript changes that. And once you have a transcript, AI can do something genuinely useful: generate structured, private coaching feedback grounded in what actually happened in the classroom.

That is what Starlight does. Record the lesson. Upload the audio. Receive a transcript and a coaching report within minutes. No observation needed. No cover required. No judgement attached.

On 1 April 2025, STAR21 became the company behind that idea. Today, it is a platform live in schools across the UK and internationally, built by a team that believes deeply in what we are doing.

The year in milestones

It has been a year of building, listening, and learning. Some highlights stand out.

In January 2026, we stood on the exhibition floor at Bett for the first time. Not as a concept, not as a prototype quietly tested behind the scenes, but as a company open to conversation, challenge and curiosity. The response was overwhelming. We spoke almost continuously from 10:00 to 16:00 on most days, and the quality of those conversations shaped everything that followed. Teachers, heads of department, MAT CEOs, coaches, procurement leads, international visitors. They did not come to be sold to. They came to talk about teaching.

Since then, the platform has grown rapidly. The Teacher Journey now gives teachers a longitudinal view of their development over time. Development Actions turn coaching suggestions into trackable next steps. The Lesson Toolkit uses the transcript to reduce workload by generating resources directly from what was taught. The Constellation Dashboard gives senior leaders anonymised, aggregated insight to shape CPD strategy across schools. And the StarMap offers an overview of teaching strengths, supporting collaborative professional learning.

We published almost 100 blog posts on The Insight Engine at coaching.software, exploring everything from what the Stanford and Harvard AI coaching trials mean for schools, to how Starlight supports the new Ofsted framework, to the difficult but important question of whether AI risks making teaching more "normal." We examined AI policy in schools, wrote about blending human judgement with AI insight, and made the case for rethinking how we support early career teachers after induction ends.

In February, I presented at the SOPHIA Network, the European Foundation for the Advancement of Philosophy with Children, on how transcripts allow practitioners to listen back to the thinking in their classrooms. It was a privilege to contribute to a conversation that sits at the intersection of philosophy, dialogue and technology.

We have also taken our first steps into academic research. A peer-reviewed paper was accepted with a perfect score at the BERA TEAN Conference, to be presented at Sheffield Hallam University in May. And just this month, we submitted written evidence to the Education Select Committee's inquiry into AI and EdTech, drawing on our dual perspective as practitioners and builders.

Growing beyond borders

One of the things we did not fully anticipate was the international dimension. Starlight is now live in schools in the UK, Switzerland, China and Hong Kong. We have an active distribution partnership in West Africa through Cosmos Publishers and Zuwaa, with a co-branded offering and sales team training already underway. A French language version of Starlight is in development for Francophone markets, and Mandarin and Cantonese versions are being built for China and Hong Kong.

Each of these contexts brings its own challenges, its own regulatory requirements, and its own cultural expectations around professional learning. But the underlying need is the same everywhere we look: teachers want to improve, and the systems around them do not provide feedback frequently enough to support that ambition.

Trust as a foundation, not a feature

If there is one thread that runs through everything we have done this year, it is trust. We said at the start of 2026 that trust would be our first principle, and we have tried to live that out in practice.

We created the North Star Charter, a signed pledge that all Starlight Leads must commit to in using the platform only for coaching and growth, never for surveillance or performance management. We built a full governance documentation suite, from DPIA and privacy policy to safeguarding guidance and parent communications, designed to give schools confidence that Starlight has been thought through properly. Teacher reports remain private by default. Leadership data is always anonymised and aggregated. Teachers retain control over their own audio.

These are not marketing lines. They are architectural decisions baked into how the platform works.

What comes next

Hundreds of teachers now use Starlight. Thousands of lessons have been uploaded, with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5. Every one of our pilot schools has converted to full adoption. One year in, the evidence is clear: teachers want this. We are only just getting started.

In the coming months, we will be introducing Deep Field Reports: bespoke, focused analyses of transcript data that surface patterns invisible in the broader dashboard view. Think of it as the Hubble Deep Field photograph. Point the telescope at a small patch of sky and you see things you could never have seen in the wide-angle view. We are building this carefully, validating it manually before we automate, because getting it right matters more than getting it fast.

We are also expanding into new domains. Our recently published careers guidance template shows how the same transcript-to-feedback approach can support careers advisers, turning a thirty-minute conversation with a student into a structured summary, action plan and follow-up record in minutes rather than the usual fifteen to twenty minutes of post-meeting paperwork. Wherever a professional conversation matters and the detail risks being lost, there is a role for what we do.

New languages are coming. New partnerships are forming. A University ITE partnership will see trainee teachers using Starlight on placement. And we have ideas, many ideas, for how transcript-derived insight can serve teachers in ways that go far beyond the coaching report.

The core mission has not changed. We exist to make feedback specific, timely, actionable and regular at scale. The STAR framework is not just our acronym. It is our quality standard. Professional athletes receive continuous, evidence-based feedback as a matter of course. Teachers deserve the same.

A thank you

A first birthday is a good moment to say thank you.

To the teachers who trusted us early, before we had a brand or a stand or a website that looked finished. To the schools who shaped Starlight through honest feedback and patient testing. To the leaders who saw what this could become and backed it when it was still becoming. To Enzo and Tim, whose commitment and skill have turned an idea into a company. And to every person who stopped at our stand at Bett, joined a webinar, read a blog post, or simply asked a good question.

We feel privileged to be doing this work. We feel a deep responsibility to do it well.

One year in. Many more to come.

Spark Insight with Starlight and join us for year 2.

Book a demo to see Starlight in action: https://starlightmentor.com/demo-request

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The Insight Engine is written by Adam Sturdee, co-founder of Starlight, the UK’s first AI-powered coaching platform, and a senior leader with responsibility for teaching, learning and coaching. This blog is part of a wider mission to support educators through meaningful reflection, not performance metrics. It documents the journey of building Starlight from the ground up, and explores how AI, when shaped with care, can reduce workload, surface insight, and help teachers think more deeply about their practice. Rooted in the belief that growth should be private, professional, and purposeful, The Insight Engine offers ideas and stories that put insight—not judgment—at the centre of development.