Ask the school

One place that has read every policy, scheme of work, slide deck, minutes document and handover note the school has ever produced, and answers with the source attached.

Morning. I have 1,842 documents from Hartfield indexed, last updated 06:40 today. Ask me anything about how this school does things.
Sources are always shown. If I can't find it in the school's own documents, I say so rather than guessing.

Handover packs

When a teacher leaves, their know-how usually leaves with them. SchoolBrain has been quietly building a profile of how each teacher actually teaches, so the replacement starts from year three, not day one.

Leaving at Christmas: Ms A. Okafor, Chemistry (Y10 and Y11)

Built from 3 years of her lesson slides, 212 marked assessments, scheme-of-work edits, 41 parent email threads, department minutes, and 4 consented lesson recordings (Sept–Oct 2026). Incoming: Mr J. Hale, NQT, starts 5 Jan 2027.
PacingShort 6–8 min explanation blocks, then paired practice. Never more than 3 slides before a question.
ExplanationsStarts concrete and visual (ball-and-stick, Lego) before any equation. Uses "particles as people" analogies consistently from Y10 onward.
QuestioningCold calls by seat row, not by hand. Always asks "and why would that be?" after a correct answer.
MarkingWhole-class feedback sheets, not individual comments. Re-tests the 3 most-missed questions the following lesson.
Where 10B struggleMoles and conservation of mass (avg 48% on topic test Oct 2026). Three pupils on reading-age support, resources need 11pt+ and chunked text.
Open threads2 parent conversations in progress (see inbox), 1 EHCP review on 14 Jan, Y11 mock resits 20–24 Jan. Separation of mixtures practical kit ordered, due 12 Jan.
  1. Week 1 for Mr Hale: read the 10B and 11A class notes (auto-generated, 2 pages each), then teach Ms Okafor's "Bonding" sequence as-is before adapting it.
  2. Pre-written for him: 10 lessons on Quantitative Chemistry in Ms Okafor's structure, with his own worked examples left blank to fill in.
  3. For Ms Patel (HoD): a 1-page summary of what Ms Okafor changed in the SoW and why, so the department doesn't silently revert.

Why this isn't just a folder of her files

Her files already exist on the shared drive. Nobody reads 3 years of slides. The pack is a structured profile: what she does, in what order, with which classes, and what to watch out for. It is checked by her before she leaves (she can correct or delete anything), and it keeps improving as the new teacher's own lessons come in.

Make a resource

Generate a worksheet, starter or homework that fits a teacher's established style and the exact point this class has reached in the school's own scheme of work.

Starter + practice: Conservation of mass (10B)

Generated for Ms Okafor's style · aligned to Hartfield SoW Chemistry Y10 §4.3 · reading-age variant included · 23 Oct 2026
Style: opens with a concrete picture before any numbers (her pattern in 38 of 41 Y10 lessons).

Starter (6 min, in pairs): A sealed bag contains a fizzing tablet and water. Before it fizzes it weighs 212 g. Your partner says it will weigh less after. Who is right, and what are the "particles as people" doing?

Style: paired talk after every explanation block; cold call by row for answers.

Explain (slide 2 of 3): Atoms are not made or destroyed in a reaction. They change partners. Same people, different dance.

Class memory: 10B averaged 48% on the Oct topic test; the three most-missed items were all about open vs closed systems, so questions 2–4 target that.
  1. Magnesium (2.4 g) burns in oxygen to give 4.0 g of magnesium oxide. What mass of oxygen reacted? Show your thinking in one line.
  2. Calcium carbonate is heated in an open crucible. Mass goes down. Has mass been destroyed? Explain using particles.
  3. The same reaction in a sealed flask. What happens to the mass reading now, and why?
  4. A pupil says "the gas has no mass". Write one sentence to persuade them otherwise.
  5. Stretch: 10 g of copper carbonate decomposes to 6.4 g of copper oxide. What mass of carbon dioxide left, and what would you expect the balance to read in a closed system?
Style: whole-class feedback sheet attached; re-test items 2 and 3 next lesson (her habit).

Reading-age variant: same questions, 11pt+, one idea per line, key words bolded. Answer sheet generated separately. Nothing here is sent to pupils until a teacher approves it.

Parent inbox

Every reply drafted with the school's actual policy, the pupil's actual record and the right tone for this school. A human reads and sends; nothing goes out on its own.

Attendance

Reads the register data your MIS already holds and turns it into the three things the attendance lead actually needs on a Monday: who is drifting, who crossed a statutory threshold, and what to do today.

This week

93.1%
overall attendance
national avg 2025/26 autumn: ~93.5%
187
persistently absent (≥10%)
16.7% of roll
21
severely absent (≥50%)

Patterns detected since last Monday

  • 14 pupils with a new Monday-only absence pattern (3+ of last 4 Mondays). Nine are in Y9.
  • Y8 PE double, Thursday p5–6: 11 unexplained absences. Same lesson, same period. Worth a conversation with the department before a parent letter.
  • 6 pupils moved from 92% to under 90% this fortnight, so the "support first" letter (per DfE guidance) is due, not the formal notice.

Today's actions

PupilAttendanceWhat changedSuggested action

Thresholds follow the DfE "Working together to improve school attendance" guidance (statutory from Aug 2024). Letters are drafted from the school's own templates, held for approval. The underlying registers are not changed; this reads from the MIS, it does not replace it.

What it knows

Everything the brain has read, where it came from, and who is allowed to see what. Teachers see their classes. SLT sees the school. Parents see nothing of this.

SourceItemsLast syncVisible to
Shared drive: Science department (slides, worksheets, SoW)1,214today 06:40Science staff
Policies and handbook (SharePoint)63today 06:40All staff
MIS: registers, timetable, contacts (read-only)liveevery 15 minAttendance team, tutors
Staff email: parent threads (opt-in per teacher)388liveThread owner, HoY
Department and SLT minutes112yesterdayAttendees
Consented lesson recordings (transcript only, video deleted)17MonThat teacher, HoD
Assessment results (department trackers)48 sheetsyesterdayClass teacher, HoD

Data rules the product is built around

  • UK-hosted. Pupil data is never used to train any model, ours or a vendor's.
  • Teacher profiles belong to the teacher: visible to them, editable by them, and only shared into a handover pack with their sign-off.
  • Every answer carries its sources. If the school's documents don't contain the answer, it says so.
  • Nothing is sent to a parent or pupil without a named member of staff pressing send.
  • DPIA template and DfE generative-AI product safety expectations checklist supplied with the pilot.

How it works

Plain retrieval over a pile of PDFs gives you a search box. This is built as three layers so the school's knowledge has structure.

1 · IngestDrive, SharePoint, email (opt-in), MIS read-only, consented recordings → parsed, chunked, de-duplicated, permission-tagged
2 · School graphEntities and relations the school actually runs on: teacher → class → topic → resource → assessment → pupil-group → policy, with time. Not just embeddings.
3 · Pedagogy profilesPer-teacher structured cards (pacing, explanation moves, questioning, feedback habits) extracted from slides and transcripts, versioned, teacher-owned
AnswersHybrid retrieval over graph + text, re-ranked, cited; refuses when unsupported
GenerationResources conditioned on profile + SoW position + class memory; always draft-first
WorkflowsInbox triage, attendance thresholds, handover assembly; human approval on every outbound action

Where the compounding advantage comes from

Each year a school uses it, the graph and the profiles get denser: more resources tagged to more SoW positions, more "what worked with this group" records, more handovers. That record is the school's, and it is the thing a new MIS or a generic copilot cannot reconstruct from a file share.

This demo is static. The real build plan (stack, data model, pilot design) is in the accompanying report.