Parrs Wood High School

Part of Greater Manchester Education Trust

Amy Senior

23 March 2026

How a focused pilot in one English faculty convinced a multi-academy trust to go all in.

Running a pilot is always a balancing act. You want enough scope to get a real sense of value, but not so much that it becomes unmanageable alongside everything else a school has going on. Parrs Wood High School, part of Greater Manchester Education Trust, took a deliberate and focused approach — keeping the pilot within the English faculty, with a specific group of students in an after-school intervention setting. That decision paid off.

A Pilot Built Around Real Needs

The use case was practical from the start. Rather than a broad rollout, the team zeroed in on a specific challenge: extended writing, and in particular, AQA English Language GCSE. Students would complete their work, have it scanned, receive detailed written feedback, and then revise and resubmit. It's a simple loop, but one that's difficult to sustain at scale when it relies entirely on teacher time.

That's where the results became striking. The English faculty, who can be among the hardest to convince when it comes to AI-generated feedback, were won over quickly.

"The detail in the feedback that you're providing has gone down a storm with our English faculty. They absolutely love it."

Student and Parent Engagement

Engagement from students was consistently strong throughout the pilot. They responded well to receiving feedback that was personal and substantive — not generic, not tick-box, but genuinely useful for their development. "The students have loved the level of feedback," the team noted, and that enthusiasm held steady week on week.

Parents were also receptive. When the school encouraged families to support their children's involvement, the response was warm. Parents could see the value in what was being offered, and that buy-in from home helped maintain momentum.

Flexibility to Fit the School

One of the things that stood out during the pilot was how adaptable the tool proved to be. The school were able to shape the experience to suit their specific context — choosing which features to lean into and how to present feedback to students with the software's inbuilt ability to tailor settings and feedback to the school's exact marking needs. That kind of flexibility matters in a busy school environment, where a one-size-fits-all approach rarely lands well. The English faculty could engage with the tool on their terms, and that autonomy contributed directly to the positive reception it received.

A Case for Trust-Wide Adoption

The cost picture is compelling. At £3 per student on the unlimited model, the tool comfortably undercuts the cost of external examiners, who typically charge around £2,000 for 200 scripts, with considerably less detail in return. For a trust looking to provide consistent, high-quality support across all four schools, the maths makes sense.

Parrs Wood and Whalley Range are now taking a joint proposal to the Greater Manchester Education Trust CEO, making the case for central funding that gives every school equal access — regardless of individual budget constraints.

The pilot was intentionally modest in scope. The ambition for what comes next is anything but.