From a Classroom Excel Sheet to an Award-Winning Literacy Movement

Four days after completing his English Language and Literature degree, Tom Reynolds was diagnosed as dyslexic.

Within 12 months, Tom had fast-tracked as a secondary school English teacher, and set out on a mission to offer others an experience of literacy skills education that felt clearer, more accessible, and more logical than his own.

Tom's personal experience shaped the way he saw the classroom. He understood how overwhelming literacy learning could feel for students - and simultaneously, how overwhelming it could feel for teachers and leaders trying to teach, mark, monitor, assess and report on so many 'seemingly abstract' skills all at once.

Tom spent over two decades teaching, leading and advising within inner-city education, as a five-times Head of English, Assistant Head Teacher and nationwide English adviser to some of the country's biggest MATs. EdenFiftyOne was born directly from the challenges he faced as a teacher, leader and learner.

Throughout his English teaching career, Tom has studied, delivered and deconstructed every English exam board specification. As part of this process, he identified a crucial pattern:

At the core of English education, there are universal skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening that form a finite library. Since the University of Cambridge introduced the very first English examinations in 1858, whilst language has evolved, no new literacy skills have been created. If no new skills have been created, we can count them. And if we can count them, we can build a definitive system around them.

Tom often explains this using the piano keys:

EdenFiftyOne presents the 51 universal literacy skills on the English piano - providing teachers, leaders and learners with a visible and accessible literacy skills framework.

The first version of EFO was not engineered in a corporate boardroom; it was created directly in the high-pressure environment of the classroom using Microsoft Excel.

Faced with a class of 'challenging' - and deeply disconnected - Year 9s, Tom utilised the cell-by-cell structure of a basic spreadsheet to visually map out bite-sized strengths and areas for development. Starting out with spelling, punctuation, grammar and vocabulary, by turning that rigid grid into a live, skill-by-skill traffic light system, he provided each student with a step-by-step, colour-coded literacy skills learning journey. Students took ownership of - and interest in - their performance and progress. Engagement and independence improved as they began chasing 'greens' [secure level] and aiming for 'blues' [advanced level]: eager to shrug-off 'reds' [limited level] and turn them into 'developing-level' 'yellows'.

Not gamified exactly, just possible.

Instead of forcing students to chase abstract, end-of-term targets, this approach focused entirely on tweaking and mastering the micro-skills that sit directly underneath final grades. The impact of focusing on tangible skills over hypothetical destinations was immediate:

• Learners could finally see the exact route in front of them and took ownership of their progress
• Teachers knew precisely which practical skill to address or intervene with next
• Leaders could clearly see the tangible, aggregated impact of literacy support across a cohort

What began as a practical classroom hack to solve a daily marking crisis quickly became something much bigger.

As Tom shared a highly-evolved version of the spreadsheet with schools across the country, something pivotal happened: they started seeing their own results improve.

This was bigger than one teacher, one classroom, or one class of Year 9s. The skill-by-skill approach could help different settings tackle literacy proficiency and progress with greater clarity and consistency. From the earliest Excel model to the advanced cloud platform schools use today, EdenFiftyOne has been shaped by real feedback from teachers, leaders, and learners from the outset. Every question, suggestion, challenge and testimonial has helped refine the platform as it is today - and like the best teachers - it keeps learning.

That is why EdenFiftyOne is not simply software for schools. It is a day-to-day education tool continually shaped by educators.

The massive impact seen in classrooms and exam halls helped Tom and EdenFiftyOne secure government and charity funding to develop the platform further. Today, EdenFiftyOne [EFO] has scaled from a classroom-built spreadsheet into an award-winning web app proudly backed by the pioneering EdTech minds behind MathsWatch.

This momentum has placed EdenFiftyOne at the centre of the national educational conversation, with the platform recently crowned as the 2026 'UK Education Provider of The Year' by the EdTech Innovation Hub (ETIH).

You can read more about this recognition in our News & Updates section.

Our purpose remains completely consistent throughout: to help young people build the literacy skills they need to succeed in the classroom, the exam hall and beyond.

We are very proud to actively support a wide range of schools, academies, and colleges from across the country.