We know 98% of students who receive personalised instruction perform better. We know teacher burnout is a problem. Our aim is to support every school to provide a personalised teaching experience to their students — without demanding more from their teachers.
14.6%
average grade improvement for students using Nurture
90%
of students reported improvements in confidence
½
the time spent delivering feedback
We didn’t always have this aim
David and Pádraic, the founders of jumpAgrade and Nurture, started jumpAgrade — their first education business — together in 2017. They wanted to make extra tuition for secondary school students in Ireland (K-12 in the US) more accessible by moving it online, and lowering costs by taking out the burden of travel.
What they found after getting up and running were huge inequalities in access to educational support for students, as a result of Ireland’s ‘grinds culture’. The cost of grinds (extra tuition) was making them inaccessible to the majority of students within lower socio-economic areas or underrepresented backgrounds. This meant these students’ grades were lower overall, and their ability to progress was hindered.
That’s when their focus shifted: “OK, how can we be as effective as possible in delivering personalised feedback so that as many students as possible can get it, regardless of background?” They began working with Learnovate, the EdTech research and design team in Trinity College, Dublin, to build a framework for fast and effective formative feedback.
Foundations for fast, effective, personalised feedback
Fast forward five years and jumpAgrade is a not-for-profit organisation (CLG) with backing from Social Entrepreneurs Ireland and Rethink Ireland. Students from lower socio-economic areas, migrant backgrounds, the Travelling community, lone-parent families and others get their online grinds funded by university access programmes, philanthropists and local development programmes. jumpAgrade is helping to level the playing field in the Irish education system, with its students increasing their grades by an average of 19%.
The framework for feedback designed in collaboration with Learnovate in the early days of jumpAgrade laid the foundations for Nurture to follow. Having had success giving feedback to students online at scale, David and Pádraic felt every teacher should have a digital tool for giving fast and effective personalised feedback. So they started designing Nurture.
Today, Nurture is a certified Microsoft Partner thanks to our Microsoft Teams integration, and winners of the 2022 International e-Assessment Awards for “Best Formative Assessment Project”.
What we set out to solve
We’re passionate about solving a few main things for teachers and students — and, importantly, doing it without making more work for them. That’s why we integrate with Microsoft Teams: tools that teachers already use and know well.
Reducing repetitive marking
Helping teachers identify common student knowledge gaps so they can create one set of feedback for that gap — cutting the repetitive tasks they face when marking work.
Rewarding reflection
Rewarding teachers for their efforts by making sure students reflect on the feedback they receive — and, by doing so, improving each student’s metacognition.
Tracking progress over time
Tracking student progress so learners, teachers, parents, school leaders and departments of education can see improvement — or the lack of it — over time.
“The only useful feedback is the feedback that’s used by students.”
Nurture is grounded in the work of our strategic advisor Professor Dylan Wiliam, the world’s leading authority on formative assessment — ensuring our platform is built on evidence and sound pedagogy. Explore our pedagogy →
Our guiding principles
Do meaningful work
Barrys > Lyons
Customer-first approach
Every day’s a school day
Backed by
Our feedback framework was developed in collaboration with Learnovate, the EdTech research and design team at Trinity College, Dublin. jumpAgrade is backed by Social Entrepreneurs Ireland and Rethink Ireland, helping to level the playing field in Irish education.