At Teachmate, we love working directly with schools. Every new tool begins with real classroom conversations, where we listen to the challenges teachers and leaders face and turn that feedback into practical, time-saving solutions. Collaboration sits at the heart of everything we do because meaningful innovation in education can only happen when it’s built with teachers, not for them.
This philosophy is what drives our Building AI Together approach: working hand in hand with educators to co-develop tools that make a genuine difference to teaching, leadership and wellbeing.
And with Ofsted’s new Education Inspection Framework coming into effect on 10 November 2025, many school leaders are already beginning the time-consuming process of reviewing and rewriting their self-evaluation forms (SEFs) to align with the updated inspection areas and criteria.
We know these shifts often fall on already stretched leadership teams. That’s why, when Jo Robertson, Headteacher at Brushwood Junior School, reached out to us for support updating her school’s SEF, we acted quickly to develop a solution that would make the process faster, easier and fully aligned with the new framework.
“Having spent hours already developing my SEF for the year, I didn’t know where I would find the time to align this to the renewed Ofsted framework. I contacted the team at Teachmate and explained the issue. They immediately started developing a tool which would update my existing SEF, under the latest Ofsted areas and evaluate against the new criteria. It takes less than a minute and saves hours, just amazing!” — Mrs J. Robertson, Headteacher
You can also watch a short video to hear directly from Jo about her experience working with Teachmate here.
Developed with schools, built for school leaders
Working in collaboration with Jo, we developed our Self-Evaluation Form (SEF) tool to fully align with the updated 2025 inspection framework. The tool, available here, helps school leaders:
- Update their SEFs automatically in line with Ofsted’s renewed inspection areas
- Generate clear evidence statements that reflect the latest criteria
- Save hours of manual editing and cross-referencing
Every feature was designed with real school feedback at its core, because schools and teachers aren’t just users of Teachmate, they’re co-creators.
And with the launch of Teachmate 2.0 incoming, schools will now have even more ways to stay ahead of curriculum and policy updates. Using our new GDPR-compliant Open Chat, school leaders can safely search the web, upload documents and instantly adapt them to reflect the latest guidance, all within the same secure platform.
A shared goal
Our collaboration with Brushwood Junior School is just one example of how we’re working hand-in-hand with educators to design practical AI tools that save time and reduce stress. Every new feature starts with one simple question: what do teachers and school leaders need most right now?
If you’ve tried our SEF tool or have ideas for how Teachmate could make your school’s processes easier, we’d love to hear from you, because innovation in education works best when it’s built together.