Case Study: Kingsthorpe Grove Primary School

The Challenge: When the board isn’t working for every child

Every primary teacher knows the scene. The board fills with the lesson’s key points; thirty children try to copy it down and the pace that’s set doesn’t always work for everyone. For a large number of pupils, that pace is simply out of reach – and the gap it creates is quiet, cumulative, and easy to miss.

At Kingsthorpe Grove Primary School in Northampton, this played out in a classroom of 10- and 11-year-olds – the final, high-stakes year of primary school in England. Daniel Bright, the school’s Computing lead and the class teacher, could see the same barrier surfacing again and again in three distinct ways:

• The frantic-copying trap. Children so busy transcribing the board that they have no attention left to listen, think or actually understand what’s being taught.
• The disappearing board. Once the teacher wipes it, it’s gone. Pupils who process more slowly are left with notes that are incomplete or wrong. Small misunderstandings harden into major ones.
• The invisible barrier. A child who can’t read the board, or can’t keep up, rarely says so out loud – least of all a ten-year-old who doesn’t want to stand out in front of friends. The need goes unspoken, unmet… and compounds over time.

Daniel was especially conscious of the pupils for whom this is hardest: children with dyslexia, where processing speed and clear visuals matter enormously; and children with ADHD or focus difficulties, for whom writing key information down in time – and retrieving it later in the lesson – is a genuine struggle. In a class working towards national assessments, the ability to capture and hold on to what’s on the board isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between keeping up and falling behind.

The Solution: A technology that fit the classroom as it already was

ShareTheBoard is an application for the digital transmission and recording of content from any writing surface.

What changed for the pupils

The clearest test of any classroom tool is whether the children actually feel the difference. At Kingsthorpe Grove, they certainly did – and the pattern in their feedback maps directly onto the three problems the pilot set out to solve: seeing the board, staying with the lesson, and holding on to what was taught.

The disappearing board stopped disappearing. Being able to scroll back to earlier work – even after it had been rubbed away – came up again and again as the favourite feature, alongside zooming in on the writing and switching between light and dark themes to suit how each child reads best. For the pupils, this wasn’t abstract: it showed up in their confidence, and in their results.

The (anonymised) student feedback says it all:

• “It helped me so much that I got high scores in my tests.”
• “I liked that it helped me do my notes, because you can go back and look at what Mr Bright wrote if it was rubbed away.”
• “I liked the feature where you could scroll back to see what the teacher wrote – it was really helpful and helped me a lot.”

What changed for the teacher

For teachers, the value was concrete: the digitisation and automatic saving of everything on the board, the improved readability of what was written, and the real-time preview on each participating device. Using it daily across his lessons, Daniel Bright rated ShareTheBoard very useful, and was unequivocal that it effectively addresses board readability and makes content more accessible for pupils with special needs.

That single change – equal access, at each child’s own pace – shifted the whole feel of the room. Pupils stopped worrying about rushing. They struggled less, because whenever they got stuck they could refer back to earlier learning instead of guessing. The note-taking that helps many children concentrate carried on, but the panic came out of it.

The pupils it reached most

The deepest impact was on the children who find traditional board-based teaching hardest to access. Being able to read the board clearly and return to it at their own speed particularly helped pupils with dyslexia and those with ADHD or focus difficulties. Daniel watched these learners become more engaged and more independent – able to retrieve what they needed on their own, and visibly growing in confidence and progress as a result.

And because the support was simply built into the tool the whole class used, no child had to raise a hand and single themselves out to get it. Tellingly, the pupils who felt they needed the app least were those who already sat near the front or had no trouble keeping up – exactly what you’d expect from a tool designed to level the playing field rather than tilt it.

The questions every school asks – and what the pilot answered

Asked what makes schools hesitate over new classroom technology, Daniel named three things without pausing: ease of use, cost, and accessibility. They are the same three questions any primary leader weighs before saying yes. Here is how the pilot answered each:

• “Will staff actually use it?” It was “very easy to set up and use,” the training was thorough, and support was quick whenever it was needed – so it fit into everyday teaching rather than adding to the workload.
• “Can we afford it?” ShareTheBoard is software. It ran on the camera and laptop already in the classroom, with no expensive interactive display or dedicated hardware to buy – a very different cost profile from a smartboard rollout.
• “Will it actually help our SEND pupils?” The teacher leading the pilot judged, without hesitation, that it makes board content more readable and more accessible for children with additional needs – and the pupils’ own words bore that out.

What happened next

The truest verdict on any pilot is what a school does when it ends. At Kingsthorpe Grove, ShareTheBoard didn’t get packed away with the trial. The school chose to keep it in daily use and to begin extending it beyond the original class – carrying the same benefits to more pupils and more lessons. Asked directly whether he would recommend it to other classrooms, Daniel’s answer was a simple, unhesitating yes.

In summary

The Kingsthorpe Grove pilot shows how a simple, camera-based tool can lift an everyday barrier that quietly holds children back. Pupils could see the board, stay with the lesson and revisit what was taught; children with additional needs gained independence and confidence, without ever having to ask for assistance or attract unwanted attention; and the teacher delivered his lessons exactly as before – only more accessibly, and running on hardware the school already owned. The strongest endorsement wasn’t a statistic or a quote. It was the decision to carry on.