ETIH Innovation Awards Winners: Learning by Questions wins Best Digital Learning Platform for Schools

Learning by Questions was recognized for evidence-informed classroom practice, real-time diagnostics, workload reduction, and measurable impact across UK schools.

Learning by Questions won Best Digital Learning Platform for Schools at the inaugural ETIH Innovation Awards 2026

Learning by Questions has won Best Digital Learning Platform for Schools at the inaugural ETIH Innovation Awards 2026, with judges recognizing a platform built around evidence-informed teaching, real-time classroom insight, and practical workload reduction.

The UK platform, also known as LbQ, combines adaptive learning, scaffolded mastery, retrieval practice, immediate feedback, and real-time diagnostics. It is designed to help teachers identify misconceptions, respond during lessons, and use learning data without adding extra administrative burden.

The category focused on digital learning platforms that can demonstrate clear classroom value, and LbQ stood out for its use across more than 1,500 UK schools, high renewal rates, weekly teacher engagement, and evidence of improved outcomes.

For Greg Adam, Managing Director at Learning by Questions, the challenge is not that schools lack access to educational research. The harder part is turning evidence into consistent practice across real classrooms.

“Schools aren’t short of educational research,” Adam says. “The challenge is finding the time and conditions to use it well - time to find it, time to understand it properly, and time to turn it into something that works in real classrooms, consistently, across subjects and schools.”

That implementation gap was a central part of the judges’ decision. ETIH Innovation Awards judge Catherine Buckler noted LbQ’s “real commitment to evidence informed practice” and highlighted the quantitative evidence behind its impact on both student outcomes and teacher engagement.

Turning research into classroom routine

LbQ’s entry positioned the platform as a way to make evidence-informed teaching more usable during everyday lessons. It is built around strategies such as immediate feedback, retrieval practice, scaffolded progression, adaptive learning, and data-driven insight.

ETIH Innovation Awards judge Richard Govada Joshua described Learning by Questions as “a highly impressive, school-centered platform” that translates evidence-informed pedagogy into daily classroom practice. He highlighted its role in helping teachers deliver feedback, retrieval practice, scaffolded mastery, adaptive learning, and diagnostics without increasing workload.

Adam explains that the issue for schools is often not disagreement with research, but the difficulty of making it visible and workable in the moment.

“Even when the evidence is strong, implementation is often where things break down,” he says. “It relies on shared understanding and systems that make pedagogy visible in day-to-day teaching, rather than something separate that gets interpreted differently in every classroom.”

That focus on implementation also shaped LbQ’s wider evidence work. Adam points to the role of organizations such as the Education Endowment Foundation in helping schools assess evidence quality, and notes that LbQ has contributed to the Department for Education’s piloted EdTech Evidence Board through the Chartered College of Teaching.

“We aim to be research-informed and research-literate, and we carry out work with independent partners to ensure that evidence is grounded in practice,” he says.

For ETIH, that made the entry stronger than a simple product submission. It showed a platform trying to connect research, teacher workflow, and school-level decision making.

Emma Thompson, Director of Content and Editor at ETIH, says: “Learning by Questions stood out because it addressed one of the hardest parts of EdTech implementation: making strong pedagogy usable in the flow of teaching. The judges saw a platform with evidence, classroom relevance, and a clear focus on reducing workload while supporting better decisions for students.”

LbQ’s entry also referenced its flagship product Wayfinder, which supports teachers with adaptive classroom tasks, automatic marking, real-time insight, and diagnostic data. The platform is used by more than 2,000 active teachers weekly and generates millions of pieces of student feedback.

ETIH Innovation Awards judge Al Kingsley pointed to that scale and evidence base, highlighting “1500 schools, 100% renewal, hard outcome data” alongside reported improvements in workload and wellbeing. He described the entry as “UK-focused” and “deeply pedagogically grounded.”

A platform built around teachers

A recurring theme in LbQ’s submission was that digital learning platforms should not sit outside classroom practice. Instead, they should fit into the teaching ecosystem and make information easier to act on.

Adam says that starting point matters because schools are already managing multiple tools, systems, and competing demands.

“Our core objective is to improve pupil outcomes, and we start from the belief that teachers and their relationships with pupils are central to that,” he says. “Any technology has to support that, not sit alongside it or add extra burden.”

In practical terms, LbQ aims to connect several classroom tasks that are often split across different tools or manual processes. Teachers can set work, receive automatic marking, see misconceptions, target interventions, and use data for planning without duplicating effort elsewhere.

Adam describes the alternative as a fragmented system in which a teacher may be able to create a worksheet quickly, but still has to check it, photocopy it, mark it, and re-enter the data later for analysis.

“What we’ve tried to do with LbQ is connect those steps into one elegant system, so information flows naturally through the school,” he says. “Everyone is working from the same underlying learning data, but seeing it in a way that is relevant to them.”

That ecosystem approach was also reflected in the judging. Kingsley said LbQ “most cleanly matches every word of the brief,” pointing to strong content delivery, learner engagement, effective data use, measurable impact, workload reduction, and renewal rates at meaningful UK school scale.

Richard Govada Joshua also highlighted LbQ’s value as a teacher empowerment tool, noting its support for automated marking, real-time diagnostics, adaptive learning, retrieval practice, and classroom insights.

Adam argues that when information flows well through a school, teachers and leaders can make clearer decisions.

“Pupils get immediate feedback on their responses and a clear sense of progress,” he says. “Teachers get real-time diagnostic insight into misconceptions, gaps and where to stretch or support. Subject leaders can see how learning is developing across schemes of work. And trust leaders can understand patterns across multiple schools to support more strategic decisions.”

The platform’s reported impact includes 100 percent of teachers reporting reduced workload, 92 percent reporting improved wellbeing, and 98 percent reporting improved educational outcomes in a Year 6 impact report. LbQ’s entry also references improvements at Ferndale Primary, Oldham Local Authority, and Pickwick Trust.

Neil Almond, ETIH Innovation Awards judge, pointed to the platform’s evidence-informed approach and its focus on working with teachers to support outcomes using AI technologies.

Evidence, feedback, and what comes next

The most detailed impact evidence cited by Adam came from the Impact on Learning, Impact on Futures report by Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith and Sarah Hand, working with Inspiring Futures through Learning Trust.

Adam points to the newly released Impact on Learning, Impact on Futures report by Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith and Sarah Hand, working with Inspiring Futures through Learning Trust, as one of the clearest examples of LbQ’s classroom impact.

“One of the most striking pieces of evidence on the contribution LbQ can make comes from the newly released Impact on Learning, Impact on Futures report by Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith and Sarah Hand, working with Inspiring Futures through Learning Trust (May 2026),” he says. “What stands out is both the scale and the depth of the study. It spans 20 schools and over 8,500 pupils, supported by 3,979 survey responses, 150 classroom observations, and extensive focus groups and interviews, giving a really rich picture of what is happening across a whole trust system.”

The report found an eight percent increase in the number of children achieving age-related expectations in reading, writing, and mathematics compared with a relatively static national picture. In some schools, suspension rates reduced by up to 50 percent, particularly among students at risk of disengagement or dysregulation.

The report also found that 98 percent of leaders and 93 percent of teachers reported a positive impact on learning. Adam says the findings show how real-time feedback can reduce delays in identifying misconceptions and how reducing classroom “slippage time” can create more learning time.

But the part that stayed with him most was not the headline data. It was a student comment about how LbQ marks their work and gives private feedback on whether they are right or wrong.

“They said it makes them want to do better, it makes them want to learn more and do more,” Adam says. “And I think that’s the point. Systems and data should serve the human experience. It’s about creating the conditions where children are motivated, supported and able to succeed.”

That combination of evidence and classroom detail helped make LbQ a strong winner in a category focused on schools. The platform is not only reporting adoption numbers, but also showing how feedback, diagnostics, and teacher insight can change what happens during lessons.

Looking ahead, LbQ’s entry points to deeper analytics, expanded leader insights, and refined adaptive pathways as future areas of development. The wider direction is clear: digital learning platforms are increasingly being judged not by whether they can deliver content, but by whether they can support teaching quality, reduce workload, and provide evidence of student progress.

If you wnat to find out more about Learning by Questions, Wayfinder, and its digital learning platform for schools, more information is available via the company’s website.