The product you never knew you needed

Staying compliant with the help of AI

We sat down with Dave Kemp, IT and Data Lead from Thrive Co-Operative Learning Trust and heard how their Trust is on a mission to reduce manual, time-consuming tasks with the help of AI.

Robin is an absolute game-changer and time-saver. It’s a product you never knew you needed that saves time, improves accuracy and frees people up to focus on those important tasks.

If you were to work out the cost of someone’s time to do this work, I’d imagine using Robin is a significant saving. And, the bigger the MAT the more checks you have to do.

Tell us a little about your Trust and your role

Sure, Thrive Co-Operative Learning Trust is based in Hull. We have 10 schools: 7 primary and 3 secondary schools. I’m the IT & Data Lead, so I manage the in-house IT team, a data manager and our creative officer.

Our CEO is driving the adoption of AI to improve teaching and learning, resulting in time savings.

Part of my role is to investigate new technology. There are so many AI tools available, but it’s important to understand which ones are actually useful to us.

How did you hear about Robin?

I spoke to your colleague Joe at The Key’s stand at the CST (Confederation of School Trusts) conference last year.

After Joe explained Robin we bought the half-termly subscription straight away.

Before Robin, how did you manage website compliance and policy audits?

It was a very manual and time-consuming process.

A colleague would check each school’s website against the DfE’s list of requirements. And, it was difficult to stay up-to-date as the list of requirements keeps changing.

Policy updates were similarly manual, involving multiple steps and checks.

What improvements have you seen since you started using Robin?

We’re still quite new to Robin, but after just a few months we’ve found it’s significantly freed up our governance professional’s time. Now the manual checks have gone, we’re just acting on what’s actually missing.

If you can develop Robin to make all the changes too that would be even better!

It’s also been great for Ofsted readiness as we can quickly check that schools are complying and their policies are all up to date.

How have your colleagues found using Robin?

Our CEO loves the Trust headlines view when you first log in.

It simply shows the level of compliance for every school in your Trust and highlights any trends. [Graphic: The Robin Trust Demo Headlines and Schools Overview Pages]

What would you like to see Robin do in the future?

We’d really like to have a website check and policy audit for MAT websites, which I know you’re developing.

I’m also keen to explore other areas where this concept could be applied. I’m actively looking for similar challenges within our Trust.

[Note: We’re about to launch our MAT website check. See our product roadmap here.]

In a sentence, how would you describe Robin to another Trust?

Robin is an absolute game-changer and time-saver.

It’s a product you never knew you needed that saves time, improves accuracy and frees people up to focus on those important tasks.

It’s not about removing people, that can be the worry with AI, it’s about giving people more time to spend on other things.

Anything else you’d like to add?

It’s such a great product, it’s nice to use and the price point is really good - it’s not expensive.

School budgets are tight, and we have many competing priorities. Robin’s affordability is a significant advantage.

If you were to work out the cost of someone’s time to do this work, I’d imagine using Robin is a significant saving. And, the bigger the MAT the more checks you have to do.

I don’t think there’s a product like this out there. Every MAT is manually going through these checks, and that’s why Robin is such a game-changer, it allows you to completely repurpose that role.

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Find out more about Thrive Co-Operative Learning Trust and you can follow Dave on LinkedIn.