Nesta’s Impact Investments backs tech ventures working in areas aligned with our 2030 impact goals. Nesta’s fairer start mission is working to narrow the education outcome gap. Leveraging Nesta's investment capital and strategic focus on the outcome gap, Nesta Impact Investments led the £550,000 seed round, alongside GrowthCo, with an investment of £250,000 in the specialist out-of-school education provider Gaia Learning. 

Gaia Learning, a north west-based edtech business, has just started its latest academic year, delivering live, online learning classes and courses for neurodivergent children aged 8-16 with ADHD and autism. Accredited as a Cambridge Registered International School Online, Gaia Learning provides an online platform of flexible, accessible digital learning support to help neurodivergent children aged 8–16 learn more effectively when mainstream school alone is not an option.

Gaia Learning serves children both via their schools and their parents. The platform comprises a range of components: a personalised progress dashboard, downloadable, customised curriculum-based courses, education and wellbeing resources and homeschooling guidance. The next level of the service includes live online classes with a maximum of 12 learners, led by a qualified teacher or special educational needs (SEN) practitioner and wellbeing sessions. 

The service caters for ages eight and above, years 7-9 and GCSE students. One-to-one online tuition is also offered. The majority of students on Gaia Learning  learn from home, though the company has partnered with schools to offer hybrid learning from community spaces.

Nesta is backing Gaia Learning to tackle the acute education outcomes gap for children with special educational needs. Most of Gaia Learning’s students are on education, health and care plans, and nationally this group have outcomes eight times worse than the average at GCSE. 

There are 1.6 million children with special educational needs, about 27% of whom are on education, health and care plans. Schools, parents and local authorities often need help to effectively support neurodiverse children’s educational needs. The team at Gaia have created a flexible, specialist platform that helps these children engage with education and thrive.

Gaia Learning is leveraging artificial intelligence tools to build content for both live online classes taught by specialist educators and self-serve modules for homeschoolers. This will help the business reach thousands of learners with content they want to engage with and which supports their learning.

Kate Longworth, CEO of Gaia Learning, said: “We’re so pleased to have our new investment partners on board and them acknowledging the potential in all we do at Gaia Learning to help school partners, learners and their families. We have tripled our learners this academic year, grown our team to 12 staff members and seen huge demand from children who are struggling in mainstream education. Now, more than ever, schools need flexible, digital solutions that can scale within budget supporting each neurodivergent child’s needs” .

Lisa Barclay, Executive Director of Investments at Nesta said: “We backed Gaia Learning as both a promising high-growth business and as a solution to tackle the acute gap between education outcomes of students with special educational needs and the average. Students with an Education, Health and Care plan, who Gaia Learning typically supports, at a national level have outcomes at GCSE eight times worse than the average. One of Nesta's key areas of focus is to narrow the education attainment gap and Gaia Learning provides a compelling solution to tackle this."

Nesta Impact Investments provides financial, knowledge and network capital to innovative tech ventures that are changing the world for good. We look to back businesses in edtech, foodtech, healthtech, climate tech, the future of work and productivity, that are closely aligned to Nesta’s mission impact goals:

• A sustainable future: to accelerate the decarbonisation of UK households and raise productivity in ways that advance the transition to net zero. Our focus at the moment is decarbonising households and small-to-medium enterprises.
• A healthy life: to increase the average number of healthy years lived in the UK, while narrowing health inequalities. Our focus at the moment is on reducing obesity. This includes new food tech, novel ingredients, healthy brands and helping people access healthy foods, as well as relevant behavioural and health tech.
• A fairer start: to narrow the education outcome gap between children growing up in disadvantage and the national average. We look for solutions that deliver high-quality, affordable provision and workforce development. We are also looking at financial inclusion solutions which can reduce stress on families who can then better support the home learning environment.