First came Trailblaze
Before Tugo, Hugo Cheyne was building Trailblaze. The idea was an AI tutor good enough to teach a student on its own, with no teacher in the room.
The software worked. The teaching didn't, and not because the AI wasn't clever enough. Students just didn't use it.
There is a name for this. Laurence Holt called it the 5 percent problem in Education Next. He looked at studies of the big online maths programmes (Khan Academy, DreamBox, i-Ready, IXL) and found real effects of 0.14 to 0.26 standard deviations, worth months of extra progress. The catch was who those effects were measured on. Only about 5% of students used the programmes as much as they were meant to, and that 5% leaned towards the students who would have been fine anyway.
Anyone who has taught a teenager can see why. You don't have a relationship with a piece of software, and it isn't live, so nothing happens if you skip it. Why do maths at five on a Tuesday when Minecraft exists?
Put a tutor on the call at five on a Tuesday and the student turns up.
Then two Hugos went to the pub
In December 2025, Hugo Harrabin, a qualified teacher with six years in classrooms, met Hugo Cheyne in the pub to talk about the question from the other end. Instead of replacing educators, how could technology make a good one better?
That's how two Hugos became Tugo.
Online group tutors started using our software, and we have since launched our own tuition on top of it.
What we are trying to do
Our mission
To make effective, science-backed tutoring accessible to every student, so they reach their academic potential and build confidence that lasts beyond the exam.
Our vision
To set the standard for online group teaching that is led by people and improved by technology, so students learn in a way that sticks.
What we do differently
There is always a person in the room
Every session is live, with a tutor teaching it. The software supports the tutor rather than standing in for one. That is the whole reason the company exists.
How we structure a lesson →Lessons follow the evidence on how memory works
Retrieval practice, spacing and interleaving feel harder in the moment. They are also what makes the material still be there a month later, so we build every session around them.
The evidence we rely on →Small groups, and we have published the reasoning
Our GCSE Maths groups hold 6 to 8 students. We have written up why, including the cases where a group is the wrong choice for a particular student.
Why 6 to 8 →The two Hugos
Hugo Harrabin
Co-founder and Pedagogy Lead
Writes about Chemistry and Physics
Hugo Harrabin is one of Tugo's two co-founders and a qualified Chemistry teacher. He read Chemistry at the University of Warwick. He then took a PGCE with Merit at the University of Buckingham and qualified as a teacher.
Hugo Cheyne
Co-founder and Designated Safeguarding Lead
Writes about Maths and Biology
Hugo Cheyne is one of Tugo's two co-founders and its Designated Safeguarding Lead. He read Economics at the University of Warwick, and has been a primary school governor with Brent Council since 2023, where he is deputy chair.
What we can tell you so far
We have delivered more than 500 student hours of Tugo tuition so far.
We were shortlisted for Best EdTech Company at the Business Tech Awards 2026, which we are pleased to be recognised for. It is recognition of the product, and our progress so far.
We will be publishing our own outcome data shortly: grade improvements we can attribute to Tugo tuition, along with how we arrived at them. We would rather report our own results than borrow someone else's numbers.
In the meantime, we point to independent evidence, which is why our research page cites the Education Endowment Foundation.
Safeguarding, and the boring details
All Tugo tutors have an Enhanced DBS check. Hugo Cheyne is our Designated Safeguarding Lead, and our safeguarding policy sets out how to raise a concern and who it goes to.
- Registered name
- Trailblaze Education Ltd, trading as Tugo
- Company number
- 15855007, registered in England and Wales
- Registered address
- 41 Streathbourne Road, London, SW17 8QZ, United Kingdom
- Contact
- hello@tugotutors.com · 07415 663 435
- How we write
- Editorial policy: sourcing, review and corrections
Come and meet us
Your child will be taught by a tutor we trained ourselves, in the method we designed.