CUSTOMER STORIES
Spring Grove Primary School
Located in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, Spring Grove Junior, Infant & Nursery School is a one-form-entry primary with a predominantly Pakistani pupil demographic and a high proportion of pupil premium and vulnerable children. Despite challenging socio-economic circumstances, Spring Grove has a long-standing reputation for excellence, having been rated “Outstanding” by Ofsted since 2015.
Huddersfield
Location
Primary
Phase
250
Number of Students
Nadeem Sarwar
Assistant Headteacher
The Challenge: Burden of Marking in Year 6
For Assistant Head Nadeem Sarwar, returning to Year 6 after a period away highlighted how demanding English assessment had become. Marking writing tasks, ensuring judgments were accurate, and preparing for moderation all took a heavy toll on teacher time. The need for a consistent, time-saving, and accurate assessment method was clear.
Adopting stylus
Spring Grove first encountered stylus through a PiXL conference in London, where headteacher Shazia Azhar could immediately see the potential of AI marking in reducing teacher workload, while increasing teacher insight. What initially sparked curiosity, quickly evolved into a subscription for years 5 and 6.
Teachers began using stylus to submit scanned copies of students’ writing. Nadeem remarked on the impressive alignment between AI-generated feedback and his own professional judgments, adding confidence to the process: ‘We are very close in agreement with the AI and the moderation’. The method stylus uses— combining AI analysis with human teacher-moderators — returned comprehensive, personalised feedback reports for each student.
“Once I got the marks back, it really reaffirmed my positiveness. This is really helpful and it’s obviously going to help me with workload.”
Impact on Teaching and Learning
Teachers at Spring Grove have seen numerous benefits from using the marking service, including:
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Reduced Workload: Teachers no longer spend hours marking, enabling more time for lesson planning and targeted interventions.
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Simple work submission: Teachers found submitting work to be a straightforward process, easily managing the scanning of work into the photocopier after each lesson. All they needed to do was email the scans as pdfs to stylus and wait for the reports.
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Actionable Feedback: All pupils received personalised targets, and students positively engaged with and acted on their guidance within morning work sessions, or focused feedback lessons. Teachers ensure pupils have time to reflect on their reports, compare with prior writing, and edit accordingly.
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Data Confidence: Teachers felt that their own judgements on pupils’ levels aligned with stylus’ marking, giving them confidence, consistency and validation in moderation, interventions and lesson planning.
Summary
Nadeem has become an informal ambassador for stylus, sharing his positive experiences at local moderation meetings with other schools. He emphasises that, contrary to concerns from some educators, the tool does not deskill teachers but instead supports and validates their judgements.
“You still know, as a teacher, exactly where each child is. AI doesn’t replace us — it supports us.”
Teachers have found stylus’ KS2 marking service to be a valuable asset at Spring Grove, enhancing the marking process, validating teacher assessments, and improving student outcomes — all while saving precious time and decreasing workload.