Tugo Named EdTech Company of the Year Finalist 2026

Tugo was shortlisted for EdTech Company of the Year at the UK Business Tech Awards 2026, six months after we launched.

In the end, HowNow took the category, and it's a fair result. They are a long way further along than we are. But we are still proud for Tugo Tutors to be shortlisted at only six months old.

Where we were at the shortlist

• Tugo launched, December 2025
• First lesson using our software, February 2026
• Accepted into the Brighteye Founder Studio, April 2026
• Five school partnerships, May 2026
• Shortlisted for EdTech Company of the Year, June 2026

What the Category Recognises

The UK Business Tech Awards judge technology companies on whether they solve a real problem. The EdTech category looks specifically at platforms improving outcomes for students and families.

The shortlist put us next to companies with much longer track records and much larger commercial footprints. That is the signal we took from it, rather than the trophy.

What We Built

Tugo puts a human teacher and an AI co-pilot inside the same live group lesson.

The co-pilot handles real-time feedback, work-checking and in-session analytics. The teacher does the things people are still better at: building rapport, spotting a misconception before it sets, and keeping all the students motivated. The intent is not AI instead of a teacher. It is AI in a good teacher's hands.

Underneath every lesson is the Tugo Method, built on spaced learning, retrieval practice and interleaving. Sessions are structured around techniques with evidence behind them for long-term retention, not just performance on the day.

We Checked Whether Anyone Else Was Doing It

In August 2026 we reviewed the public product pages of 14 UK online tutoring platforms, the providers a parent is most likely to encounter, all delivering online to secondary-age students. We recorded two things for each: what format the lessons run in, and where the AI sits.

• Six offer group teaching, five of them online. Tute runs groups of up to 12, MyTutor and Sherpa run small groups for schools, Kip McGrath and Study Mind run them for families, and Explore Learning runs them in centres.
• Six have shipped AI features somewhere in the product. GoStudent, Preply, Sherpa, Atom Learning, Explore Learning and Third Space Learning.
• None runs an AI assistant live inside a group lesson alongside a human teacher.

The pattern is consistent. Where the AI is live and conversational, the format collapses to one student and one machine. Third Space Learning has gone furthest here, retiring its human tutor network in favour of Skye, which teaches 1:1. In the format where there is a group of students with a human teacher, the AI sits either side of the lesson: planning support before and summaries afterwards.

The closest anyone comes is a Third Space Learning programme run with Littera, which alternates live 1:3 sessions with a human tutor and separate 1:1 sessions with Skye. The two still do not happen in the same room.

The review covers publicly documented features as of August 2026 and providers may have unreleased work. If you run a UK platform that pairs a live AI assistant with group teaching, tell us and we will correct the record.

Where We Have Got To

Since launching in December 2025 we have been accepted into the Brighteye Founder Studio, partnered with five schools, and delivered more than 500 student hours of tuition.

Those hours are the part we would point an investor at first. Until now we have sold the software business to business, to tutors already running group sessions of their own. That meant the co-pilot had to hold up in someone else's classroom, with someone else's teaching style, and without either of us in the room. Five hundred student hours later, it does. That is a harder test than running it ourselves would have been.

The economics are the reason the format matters. At 6 to 8 students a session costs £22.50. We explain why we cap groups at that size separately. It is the point where a teacher can still reach everyone, and the point where structured tuition stays affordable for families who would otherwise be priced out.

What's Next

Selling the software to other tutors proved the product works. The next step is teaching the lessons ourselves.

From September 2026, Tugo groups run direct to families. Same co-pilot, same Tugo Method, capped at 6 to 8 students, taught by our own teachers rather than licensed out to someone else's. Families are joining a waiting list for those first groups.

That shift from B2B to B2C is deliberate, and it is the harder of the two businesses to build. We are doing it because selling software to other tutors puts a layer between us and the only question that finally matters: whether a student comes out of the year with a better grade than they would have had otherwise. Owning the lesson is the only way to answer it honestly.

So the work for the rest of 2026 is narrow. Fill the September groups, teach them well, and publish our own outcome data rather than borrowing anyone else's. The shortlisting says the idea stands up. Results are what will settle it.