Let Teachers SHINE winners 2026
Eight innovative teacher-led projects win share of £170,000 from SHINE
Let Teachers SHINE has supported more than 100 teachers to develop innovative practice since 2014. If there is one thing we have learned in that time, it is this: behind every idea with the power to change children’s lives is a person brave enough to carry it forward.
In social impact, as in business, the breakthrough rarely begins with a fully formed solution. It begins with someone who refuses to look away from a problem, who keeps going through setbacks, who is willing to take a risk because they believe children deserve better. That is what these winners represent. They are building solutions out of deep care, hard-won insight and extraordinary determination.
Together, they form a community of founders, doers and changemakers whose ideas are rooted in classrooms but have the potential to travel far beyond them.
They now join a remarkable SHINE community that includes Vocabulous, TT Rock Stars, Chatta and Boromi, each of which began as one teacher’s response to a need they could not ignore and went on to create real impact at scale.
Let Teachers SHINE shows us what’s possible when we support teachers to innovate, to experiment, to drive change. We can’t wait to see what they achieve.
This year’s winners are:
Angelika Bowmer – Mini Scientists’ Lab
A visionary new project aims to ensure disadvantaged children have the vocabulary and facts they need to succeed in primary science, and beyond.
Angelika Bowmer, primary science Lead Practitioner at North Tyneside Learning Trust, has been awarded a £25,000 Let Teachers SHINE grant to develop her project, Mini Scientists’ Lab.
A digital, game-based primary science app, Mini Scientists’ Lab will help children master key scientific vocabulary and knowledge through playful lab-themed activities.
“I really wanted to create a platform where the system gets to learn the child in such a way that it can really reinforce all those facts and vocabulary, and provide feedback for the teacher that shows exactly where the children are at – allowing for a tailored approach where pupils can be pushed to particular questions to target their specific knowledge gaps,” said Angelika.
Dr Deb Shorthouse – Family Literacy Project
A pioneering new project aims to give nursery children from disadvantaged backgrounds the best possible start to their education, before they reach the classroom.
Dr Deb Shorthouse has been awarded a £16,000 Let Teachers SHINE grant to develop the Family Literacy project, which works with parents to address low literacy attainment for disadvantaged children.
“The project is about supporting families with literacy, by working alongside them to support parents with developing their children’s emergent literacy skills and school readiness,” explained Deb.
The project builds on The Home Literacy Project – a previous three-year SHINE-funded project led by Deb that focused on intensive home visits. The project worked with parents in the home, dramatically improving their children’s early literacy skills.
Valli Krishnappan – Logic MasterMind
An innovative computing lead is developing a gamified platform to improve recall and exam performance by helping GCSE students master computer science through digital ‘escape rooms’.
Valli Krishnappan, a secondary teacher with 15 years of experience, has been awarded £25,000 from Let Teachers SHINE to develop Logic MasterMind, a platform designed to boost student engagement, confidence and exam success.
“Students like games,” said Valli. “I feel like the escape room is a very good idea for holding students’ attention in class, and I want teachers to use this in their classrooms as part of regular lesson activities.”
Logic MasterMind is an interactive platform where students navigate virtual ‘escape rooms’, solving rapid-fire questions and short challenges to unlock and progress through themed rooms, each room representing a different topic on the curriculum.
By turning computer science into a game, Valli hopes to solve the problem of student disengagement by transforming exam preparation into an interactive and engaging experience.
Matthew Harper-Duffy – Local History Hub
A primary school teacher is tapping into local history to help pupils build confidence, connection, and stronger skills of reading and writing.
Matthew Harper-Duffy has been awarded £25,000 from Let Teachers SHINE to expand Local History Hub, a teacher-led network that helps schools across the country use their local landmarks and community heritage to enhance pupil’s learning across different subjects.
“I think local history is a really good leveller because it literally meets children where they’re at,” explained Matthew.
The project is designed to make history lessons more relevant and relatable for every child, enabling them to connect with their communities in a meaningful, lasting way.
By focusing on familiar places, local buildings and community figures – as well as distant civilisations like the Egyptians, Greeks or Romans – Local History Hub helps pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds build a genuine sense of belonging with where they live.
Sarah Featherstone – Ready To Thrive
An early years teacher is launching a targeted intervention to help nursery age children from disadvantaged backgrounds arrive at primary school with the skills they need to succeed.
Sarah Featherstone, experienced teacher and early years lead, has been awarded a £24,800 Let Teachers SHINE grant to develop Ready To Thrive – a project designed to help children aged three to four to build the basic skills needed for a strong start at school.
“Children are repeatedly arriving in school not ready for the challenges that they face when they start learning. Skills like eating independently, responding to instruction, listening to adults, asking for help, and going to the toilet – things that people don’t normally think of as school readiness. Children are increasingly arriving not ready for those challenges,” explained Sarah.
Ready To Thrive is designed to specifically support disadvantaged families, offering workshops to parents sharing strategies to teach these foundational skills at home.
“The idea is that by empowering parents and enabling children, this will free up teachers from the time they’re currently spending teaching the basic skills that children need to be arriving at school with.” explained Sarah.
Tara Markham – Noticed
A pioneering Head of Science is developing an automated AI platform to help absent students catch up on lessons they have missed and stay on track with their learning.
Tara Markham has been awarded a £25,000 Let Teachers SHINE grant to develop Noticed, a project aimed at helping learners to keep up with their studies following absence from the classroom.
Around the country schools are facing a sharp rise in persistent absence, particularly since the Covid 19 pandemic. “Around 60 million days of learning are lost every year, with no effective follow-up procedure for schools or students to bridge the gap. This is essentially the problem that Noticed aims to fix,” said Tara.
By linking directly with school and curriculum information, Noticed will be able to identify absent students, generate bespoke worksheets for them based on what they missed, and notify the students via a portal with what they need to complete.
Through the Noticed platform, Teachers can easily find the resources for learners to use either when they return to class, or to monitor and support students during periods of long-term absence.
Noticed flags student misconceptions to the teacher and also flags their ‘best efforts’. This recognition and monitoring by the teacher will help the student feel seen and included, and to know that their progress is valued.
Sean Harris – Right To Rest
Sean Harris, a Teesside academy trust leader, has secured £20,000 from Let Teachers SHINE to develop Right To Rest, a transformative initiative tackling sleep inequality – a hidden barrier preventing thousands of children from reaching their full potential at school.
The Tees Valley Education project aims to address sleep poverty among children and young people, restoring dignity and supporting improved educational outcomes.
“Research estimates are that around 900,000 children experience sleep hardship nationally,” said Sean.
“That can be anything from disrupted routines to quite simply not having a bed, in some cases sleeping on the floor, or sharing a bed, or overcrowded bedrooms, and so on. Yet we know many of these issues are structural.”
Right To Rest aims to reframe the narrative that sleep hardship is always a result of ‘bad decisions’ in the home. Instead, the project focuses on working alongside children, giving them agency, and supporting them as active participants who have a say in shaping their own lives.
Matt Revill – AI For Access
A primary school headteacher is pioneering the use of AI to speed up planning, create resources and make classrooms more responsive to learners’ needs.
Matt Revill has been awarded a £12,000 Let Teachers SHINE grant to develop AI for Access, an innovative project designed to train teachers in the effective and safe use of artificial intelligence to quickly plan lessons and adapt teaching resources.
“Pupil cohorts are changing quite rapidly in terms of their level of need,” explained Matt, “and it’s not just the level of need – it’s the complexity and the variety of need.”
AI for Access aims to help teachers create materials that are tailored to the specific needs of their pupils. For example, AI can simplify classroom texts so that lower-ability readers can still participate in whole-class reading lessons.
“What AI can offer is a manageable way of doing adaptive teaching, creating altered resources, planning things in different ways to meet those different needs,” explained Matt.