The classroom that grows with every child

The classroom, rebuilt so a human keeps the grader's seat.

Solstra is a concept prototype of the layer a school actually runs on — units, live teaching, marking, a gradebook — reimagined so AI proposes at speed and a named human decides every judgement that reaches a learner. The responsible-AI guardrails live inside the platform, not bolted onto a side-tool.

Runs on Claude in the live demo · concept prototype · simulated or gated-live AI · wholly synthetic, pseudonymised data
Why it exists

Google Classroom owns the layer. This reimagines that layer — AI-native.

The tools that entered classrooms recently sit beside the system a school runs on, as a teacher's side-tool. Solstra rebuilds the system itself, AI-first, as a working concept: the model drafts, clusters and flags; the teacher stays the marker of record; and the trust controls are the point, not the fine print.

"AI drafts, clusters and flags at speed. A named human decides what is correct and signs every grade a learner sees. That line does not move — no matter how good the model gets."
— the Solstra design principle
What's inside

Everything a classroom needs — and the things Google Classroom can't do.

Live checkpoints

The class hits a mastery checkpoint; the model groups the wrong answers into proposed patterns. You review, approve a 60-second re-teach for just those pupils, and decide to progress the class.

AI proposes · you decide

Human-first marking

You mark against the rubric before the AI's suggestion is revealed — and you can't sign without your own mark. When the model reads a wrong answer as fine, the human is what catches it.

Marker of record

Assistants

Teacher-built, subject-specific helpers with guardrails baked in — hints not answers, on-topic only, and "that's one for your teacher" when out of scope. Under-13 is teacher-mediated with no pupil accounts.

Guardrailed · on Claude

Grounded notebook

Answers only from the teacher's approved sources, cites which one it used, and when the answer isn't there it says so. Grounded, or silent — no open-web guessing near children.

Cited · source-only

Class stream

Teachers post announcements and materials; pupils ask and respond. Nothing a pupil posts reaches the class until a teacher approves it — human-gated by design.

Human-gated

Trust Ledger

Governance as the architecture, not a buried PDF: human-marker-of-record and shadow-mode locked on, pseudonymisation and the under-13 rule enforced, a DPIA gate, and a session log of every step.

Locked on in the prototype
Responsible by design

The guardrails are the architecture.

Solstra is built so that improving model capability expands what AI assists with while the human-accountability core stays exactly where it is.

  • Human as the marker of record — the model never awards a grade.
  • Shadow-mode only — AI runs alongside human marking, never on a live grade.
  • Pseudonymised inputs — names never reach the model.
  • DPIA-gated — any live pupil-data use is blocked until the paperwork is done.
  • Under-13 pattern — no pupil AI accounts; teacher-mediated throughout.
  • Grounded, or silent — sources and citations, never open-web guessing.
Who built it

Built by a computing teacher who runs this layer every day.

Solstra is an independent concept by Saqub Hussain — author of a complete, exam-mapped Reception-to-Year-11 computing curriculum published openly at plantbotcomputing.co.uk, and the builder of the working prototype. It runs a real Year 5 unit end to end. The delivery layer isn't a theory here — it's a daily practice, rebuilt the way it should be.

"I run the classroom-delivery layer daily, and I've drawn the line for where AI can and can't touch assessment — around children, under regulation. Solstra is what the AI-native version looks like when a human stays accountable."
— Saqub Hussain
See it working

The whole concept is interactive — and it runs on gated, real Claude.

Open the classroom, run the Gate Rescue, catch the confident-wrong mark, ask the grounded notebook a question it has to refuse. Every claim on this page is one click away.