As we are now around half way through the first academic term of the year, it seems a good opportunity to update our supporters on how our new grants and projects are getting on.

In June we awarded a third grant to Let Teachers SHINE veteran Colin Hegarty. Colin was one of the inaugural winners of the competition back in 2012 and he is the brains behind HegartyMaths, an online platform that provides free online videos to students studying KS3, GCSE and A-Level Maths. This grant will enable him to take an eight-month break from teaching to concentrate on redeveloping the www.hegartymaths.com website in time for the launch of the new maths curriculum in September 2015. Colin’s project has been such a roaring success that he was recently awarded a Pearson teaching award for The Innovative Use of Technology by none other than the Prime Minister, David Cameron himself.

Our Let Teachers SHINE competition continues to develop, inspire and grow. This year, we made 11 new Level 1 award to teachers across England, from Plymouth in the south to Blackpool in the north. The projects are now underway and promise to achieve great things. We recently headed over to our friends at Bloomberg for a best practice day where the teachers could update one another and share their best tips and experiences. You can read more about them here [link to LTS page on SHINE website].

We are also thrilled to award a new grant to Digismart, who are our longest standing innovation partner. Digismart a motivating literacy catch up initiative for disadvantaged children. With this latest grant, Digismart will be expanding right across the country reaching 60,000 children over the next couple of years.

We have full confidence all our grantees, both new projects and old, will live up to our high expectations, and we look forward to keep you updated throughout the coming year.