When we launched Earwig in 2013 it was mainly as a digital evidence repository and filing system for mainstream schools. It was only when we began working with schools it became apparent that it was special schools who needed to record the most evidence ,and even more importantly they needed some seriously sophisticated software to assess their pupils and link that supporting evidence to those assessments. One huge software development surge later, the assessment module was born and Earwig became indispensible to hundreds of special schools all over the country. We won numerous awards, we were featured in a double page spread in The Sunday Times as ‘game-changing’ software that would change the future. And we have even been specifically recommended by the Department of Education as a tool to help manage SEN assessment.

Although we are immensly proud of everything Earwig has achieved, it has only been possible because of the teachers who use Earwig, and their “Is there any chance we could …” questions which have led us to hone and curate the software into something that was never dreamed possible before. Reports on tracking, benchmarking, for parents evenings and annual reviews are all automated, instead of taking hours of teacher’s precious time, they are produced in seconds. Evidence of learning is multimedia, which of course is so much more valuable for SEN pupils less likely to be producing academic work. And of course, we were told that teachers didn’t want to be restricted to just one framework, they needed total flexibility allowing them to use any framework with any pupil and as many as they needed. They needed to assess engagement as well as progress and they even needed a customisable EHCP framework so they could track against those targets too.

All this and more is why Earwig is the nation’s most popular assessment software. Thank you to all of our wonderful schools, we couldn’t have done it without you!