Medics and QE contemporaries Kavi Samra and Paul Jung (OE 2008–2015) are working with the School to trial their education app, Medly AI.
The app aims to harness AI to help students from backgrounds like theirs who may not have access to all the educational resources available to others. They only started working on the business in August, yet already it has won funding and been accepted into Microsoft’s start-up programme.
“We’ve always wanted to try to democratise education,” says Kavi. “Medly AI was born from the vision of making quality education accessible and personalised through the power of AI. Both Paul and I noticed throughout our education how people often had advantages from their socio-economic background in terms of educational resources (e.g personal tuition): both of us come from backgrounds that didn’t allow us access to these resources. Recognising the gaps in traditional educational systems due to work pressures on teachers and staffing issues, we saw the potential of AI to fill these gaps and therefore conceptualised a platform that could act as a personal tutor, examiner, and classroom assistant, all integrated into one user-friendly interface.”
After just two months of development, Microsoft admitted Medly AI to its programme, providing Kavi and Paul with mentoring from a business development manager and meeting the costs of the platform up to £150,000. A month later, the project was also accepted into UCL’s Hatchery start-up accelerator, enabling its professional fees for legal, IP and accounting costs to be funded.
Both Paul and Kavi have deep connections with UCL. Paul holds a PhD in Neuropsychiatry from the university and has an extensive background in coding and teaching. He included AI in his research, on which he has published and given international presentations. He has returned to his medical degree at UCL and is in his final year, completing his MBBS in August. Kavi, who currently works as a doctor in anaesthetics, completed his medical degree at UCL in 2021 and is a clinical teacher within its medical school: his approaches to using teaching theory in a digital age earned him an Associate Fellowship of Higher Education Award from UCL and he is also one of the youngest recipients of an honorary fellow contract at UCL.
Paul is responsible for writing code and working on the technical side of the project, while Kavi takes on operations.
After they approached the School about trialling the app with QE students, they recently had a meeting with Headmaster Neil Enright and with Gillian Ridge and Amy Irvine, Heads of Biology and Chemistry respectively. “We demo’d the platform to both Gillian and Amy, introducing our teacher mode,” says Kavi. “This is where teachers are able to set questions (from a large database, or their own custom questions) to their respective classes for homework, or in a test format.”
Medley AI can then:
- Understand the questions
- Work out how they fit into the curriculum of the subject
- Assign them to a specification point
- Mark the students’ answers.
“From here, the teacher can get in-depth statistical insights into each student’s weak topics, topic by topic and class by class. This then enables them to customise their classroom teaching according to class-wide weak topics and, of course, saves an incredible amount of time in terms of marking student work.
“Both Dr Irvine and Dr Ridge seemed quite impressed and were eager to start using Medly as a resource to save time and understand where their students don’t perform well. We have completed the onboarding for the Year 11 group and look forward to working with the Science department in the New Year,” Kavi adds. “This will involve teachers setting homeworks on the platform and providing feedback on what they’d like to see in our teacher mode to help us improve the platform. The students will, of course, have access to our base platform, too, in case they wish to do additional learning or practise questions or exams.”
Mr Enright said: “We are very pleased to be working with Kavi and Paul as they develop this exciting venture that is showing great potential to support our boys, and other young people, with their consolidation and revision.”
He combines globe-trotting on business with time spent with his young family in beautiful rural Suffolk. Yet, he says, without QE, “I would not have the skills or education to have the life I currently live. I received the invitation for the 450 Club and wanted to give something back.”
Boortmalt has 27 malting locations worldwide, with a total production of 3 million tonnes of malt – a key ingredient in both beer and whisky. “We supply brewers and distillers from the big global [players] to local and craft scales. I am responsible for the global account management for several of the world’s largest brewers, in addition to local responsibility in the UK and North America. Roughly 50% of my time is spent travelling, either meeting with customers, or visiting our production sites, or Antwerp HQ. In the past 18 months I have visited: Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland, Switzerland, Vietnam, Canada, USA and Australia for work.
Dr Paul, author of the acclaimed 2022 book, The House of Dudley, delivered a lecture assembly to Years 8 & 9, before conducting a source-based workshop to A-level historians.
Headmaster Neil Enright said: “We are tremendously grateful to Dr Paul for giving us her time and providing these insights into the family as we wrap up our anniversary year. It seems clear that without the Dudleys, not only would Queen Elizabeth’s School not exist, but neither would the Tudors – or not as we know them, in any case.”
John Dudley’s success in building up the Royal Navy, as Admiral of the Fleet. He prepared it for the successes it was to enjoy in the second half of the 16th century. He added to the fleet and to the armoury, while developing Portsmouth as a great port. His military experience and leadership were important at the 1545 Battle of the Solent against the French, which, Dr Paul said, was a greater threat to England than the later Spanish Armada. John Dudley was nearly on the Mary Rose, which famously sank, but had moved across to the larger Great Harry with the king, Henry VIII.
The boys asked many questions. One wondered why so many grammar schools like QE were established under Elizabeth. Because, Dr Paul said, men such as Robert Dudley and William Cecil, her chief adviser, had received a humanist education and sought to spread that widely. Another asked why Henry VIII had had Edmund killed, given that he had brought so much money into royal coffers. She concluded that Henry probably had no personal animus against him, but that Edmund’s unpopularity made his death a good political move.
Matthew is Head of External Relations, Executive Assistant to the Headmaster, and Clerk to the Governing Body. “It was a good-humoured and lively atmosphere, with old friends enjoying each other’s company very much the point of the gathering,” he said. “I talked about the School’s 450th anniversary year, some of the different projects that had been undertaken and my role within them – hopefully giving a mildly entertaining insight. Alongside this, I encouraged them to remain connected, or re-connect, with the School, and explained that they are always welcome.”
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