The Story Behind Get My Grades

Get My Grades was created by the Husband-and-Wife Team, John and Sam, in 2016 but their story of how Get My Grades came to be Get My Grades started a little before that.  

John is a former science teacher from the Teach First programme, who left in 2012, disillusioned with the incredibly high workload and unattainable standards. He then became a private tutor, working for some of the most prestigious tuition agencies in London.  

With fantastic feedback from his clients and in very high demand, Sam started to work full-time alongside John, running his schedule and invoicing clients. This was the start of their family run business providing tuition!  

John’s students and their families loved him because of his enthusiasm, wide-ranging knowledge and his ability to get young people to understand the basic ideas that help to put a subject in perspective. His core belief is that, once students understand a subject and how it relates to other aspects of their lives, they not only do better in exams but they actually enjoy the subject and want to learn more. What’s more, anyone can do it, with the right support. He began running tutor training and metacognition programmes for tuition agencies and now had thousands of hours of tuition experience. With Sam seamlessly running everything that wasn’t education, John could get on with what he loved – teaching people and changing lives.  

John’s students tend to genuinely enjoy their lessons, even though they cover not just the fundamental principles but also more advanced ideas that inspire them to be curious and interested in even the areas that they previously found most difficult. He has helped students through some of the most challenging exams in the UK and helped students to turn around their fortunes when they’ve been finding a subject especially challenging. By carefully keeping track of what students have covered and how well they’ve been doing, John can make sure he focuses his efforts on the key areas of weakness to make sure students make the best progress. John was now tutoring over 30 students on a regular basis, and his searches to find a solution that could allow him to track the progress for each and set work for them provided no results.  

So, in 2016, Sam came up with the idea of applying John’s knowledge and style of teaching to an online platform. It could include all of the content, including material that stretches just beyond the limits of the course. Additionally there could be definitions of all the key terms, so students are not left confused by technical terminology. It could even have the questions that John would design and set, with detailed feedback for each one. As they discussed the idea and thought about it more, John realised that he could design software that could decide which questions to set students in the same way he’d decide which questions to set in a lesson, based on the student’s performance and understanding. The idea for ‘Get My Grades’ was born, as was their first son, Arthur. The rest, as they say, is history!  

By 2018, Sam and John had built an enthusiastic and knowledgeable team, guided by Sam’s expertise and experience in operations and John’s understanding of education. This was the year when we developed the majority of the platform and developed the English and Maths content, including over 850 concepts and 75,000 questions.

The Get My Grades Platform was finally launched in September for students and parents, with tutor accounts following in October.

At Bett 2019, Get My Grades launched our platform for teachers and international partners. We’ve expanded the team, released new content and started to help our partners in Africa, the Middle East and further afield to provide an outstanding education platform in their own regions.

We are now preparing to launch our research in collaboration with the University of Plymouth and UCL to make our platform even better, with cutting-edge cognitive psychology research. Get My Grades means that all students can now enjoy learning and track their progress. With our ‘Free School Meals’ Promise, even students from less privileged backgrounds can experience the same great service at a subsidised rate. Our institution packages allow professional educators – schools and tuition agencies – to make use of our sophisticated platform to improve the quality of educational data whilst reducing the workload of their teachers.