We will not promise grades.
Teaching well changes what a child understands. Anyone promising you a number is selling something else.
ABOUT SIDECOG
Most students are taught to memorise. Very few are taught to understand.
SideCog was built to change that.
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What SideCog is
SideCog is a personalised teaching platform for learners aged 11 to 16, built by teachers and aligned to the UK curriculum and GCSE exam boards.
It starts by working out what a learner actually understands. The same wrong answer can come from a missing piece of knowledge, a misconception that has taken hold, low confidence, or simply rushing. Each of those needs a different response from a teacher.
SideCog identifies the likely cause and adapts what comes next: the explanation, the questions, the level of support and the pace.
The aim is not more time on the platform. It is a learner who understands more, believes they can, and needs less help.
A teacher notices. Then the lesson moves on.
Julian spent nearly twenty years teaching secondary science. The thing that kept happening was students giving the right answer for the wrong reason, and nobody finding out until an exam question came at it from a different angle.
Experienced teachers can tell when something has not landed. What they do not have is the time to stop and deal with it, because there are thirty children in the room and a timetable to keep. That is where most gaps start.
SideCog was built to be the thing that does not have to move on.
The people behind it
Julian Dance, co-founder and Head of Big Ideas. Nearly twenty years teaching secondary science, and the educational thinking behind SideCog. He began building it while still teaching full time, after years of watching correct answers hide gaps that surfaced later.
Gareth Moores, Educational Lead. More than thirty years in teaching, school leadership and teacher development, including work with vulnerable learners and in specialist settings. He leads how SideCog teaches.
Rachel Dance, co-founder and Operations. Business development and operations professional, entrepreneur and mum of two teenagers, passionate about giving every child the tools and confidence they need to succeed.
Simon Thompson, Technology and Strategy Advisor. Technology entrepreneur with 3+ decades of experience building and scaling software businesses, including two exits.
How it teaches
It diagnoses before it teaches.
Every answer is read against the misconceptions teachers know come up in that topic.
It teaches in small pieces.
A short, focused explanation aimed at the specific thing that is missing, rather than a lesson repeated from the start.
It connects ideas.
Concepts are taught against the bigger ideas that hold a subject together, because understanding that is linked is understanding that lasts.
It comes back.
Unresolved gaps are scheduled rather than forgotten, and return until the learner can handle them in a form they have not seen.
What we will not do
We will not hand out answers.
A learner who is stuck gets a nudge towards the thinking, then the step, then the method, and does the work themselves at every stage.
We will not tell you this replaces a teacher.
It was built by teachers to do the part a classroom has no time for. That is a different job, not a better one.
Talk to us
Whether you are a parent, a teacher or a student, we would like to hear from you.
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