Purpose
Our purpose is to give every child in care the numeracy foundations they need to succeed at GCSE Maths.
Helping children in care achieve the highest GCSE Maths grade they can.
STEMeUp is a fully customised and automated maths learning platform for children in care — and for the network of Designated Teachers, PEP Caseworkers, and Virtual School Heads working alongside them.
Get in touchStarting in the North East before rolling out nationally — talking to schools and local authorities now.
Why now?
UK NEET numbers (16–24-year-olds not in education, employment or training) have just passed one million — the highest level in over a decade.1 Strong numeracy is one of the clearest protective factors we have against that trajectory. For care leavers in particular, GCSE Maths attainment is the single biggest measured predictor of whether they enter sustained education or employment by age 21 — bigger than placement type.2
Vision
Our vision is a future where being in care no longer predicts a child’s GCSE Maths grade.
Mission
Our mission is to have — by the end of 2027 — 1,000 children in care on track for a 5+ GCSE Maths grade.
Knowledge and potential aren’t the same thing.
At STEMeUp, we believe grades are not a good representation of anyone’s potential. Entering care comes with a wide range of disruptions — and those disruptions create learning gaps that can feel impossible to catch up from. This has nothing to do with talent or ability.
For most children, knowledge and potential overlap so closely that one is a fair proxy for the other. For children in care, disruption has broken that link. The knowledge you can measure isn’t the potential you’d see if the gaps were filled. So, our first job is to find those gaps — precisely, child by child — and start to fill them.
What we’re building.
Three things that have to work together.
An AI tutor that adapts to the moment.
A tutor that adjusts mode and difficulty to the learner — teaching a concept, asking the learner to teach it back, or offering an easy win when the right move is to rebuild confidence before pushing on.
A knowledge-gap mapping engine.
Breaking GCSE Maths down into its smallest building blocks and mapping every child precisely onto it — finding the specific gaps that hold a learner back, child by child.
A data layer that works for everyone.
Up-to-date engagement, progress, and gap data for every learner — written in language that drops straight into PEP meetings and Ofsted evidence, in three clicks.
Interested in piloting with us?
We’re selecting a small group of schools and local authorities for our first pilot cohort. Get in touch to find out more.
Get in touchWho we’re building this with.
We’re building STEMeUp with the people who’ll use it:
- Learners sitting their GCSEs in two or three years’ time, who deserve a fair shot at the grade they’re capable of.
- Carers whose continuity around the child matters as much as anything the platform does.
- Designated Teachers who want a clear picture of each child and their areas of need.
- PEP Caseworkers who want evidence of progress that doesn’t take extra time to assemble.
- Virtual School Heads who need cohort-level visibility into the incremental progress children make — a granularity that attendance and grades alone cannot offer.
We’re rolling out across the North East first, beginning with Durham, before scaling nationally.