Mainstream teachers in Scottish schools have a statutory obligation to support children with additional special needs (ASN). Trellis brings frontier technology to schools so teachers can spend less time on admin and more time delivering great learning experiences.
Since 2004, the number of students in Scottish Schools with additional special needs (ASN) has risen to over 40%. Planning for, understanding and meeting those needs is a statutory obligation for schools and it’s mostly delivered in mainstream classrooms.
This brings with it a huge set of workload burdens for teachers. We want to bring frontier technology to schools so teachers can spend less time on admin and more time on improving learning outcomes for their students.
Trellis is a joint venture between Create/Change and HelpFirst with the goal of using AI responsibly to solve real problems for teachers and help ASN students get the support they need.
Our first product uses machine learning to turn meeting audio and other sources into compliant ASN documents, and checks they meet best practice for policy, privacy and safeguarding.
The Trellis team have really focused in on the problem, using AI in a very clever way, freeing up teachers do what they do best. For me it’s been a rewarding experience working with talented and dedicated people to create a solution for Scottish schools
Russell Cockburn, Head of Scottish Government Digital Learning Unit
Trellis has been co‑designed with Teachers, Quality Improvement Officers and SMEs and features user-centred design based on extensive field research in schools, best-in-class data governance supported by mentorship from the Information Commissioner’s Office and AI ethics informed by our human-in-command approach.
To ensure schools can trust Trellis with their data, the product also features:
• UK hosted, secure Azure architecture
• GLOW SSO
• Cyber Essentials certified; ISO27001 in progress
• GIRFEC compliant
• Optimised for Scottish accents
Trellis is funded by CivTech and the Scottish Government’s Learning Directorate. This enables us to offer Trellis to Scottish councils free of charge.
We’re developing the product in partnership with our Teacher Strategy Group of dedicated expert ASN leads and Depute Heads. We meet monthly to discuss product development with one aim: to ensure that we are meeting the needs of ASN teachers. Evaluating AI is challenging because AI is non-deterministic: it can be effective in some contexts but not others. Involving users systematically throughout the development process ensures a 360 degree evaluation of possible impacts.
We’re looking for more schools to Join us. If you want to demo the product, see How to Create Mock Recordings or How to Redact Documents.
Create/Change and HelpFirst are building Trellis in collaboration with the Scottish Government’s Learning Directorate, Aberdeenshire and Dumfries & Galloway.
