Help & FAQs

SoloCogs is a GCSE Foundation Science learning platform that's accessible by design - built for every kind of learner, with particular strength for students with ADHD, autism or dyslexia. It is operated by Portsdown Tuition (a sole trader based in Portsmouth) under the trading name SoloCogs.

It has three product surfaces:

• SoloLab - interactive lessons, Required Practicals, knowledge resources
• SoloCognition - confidence-rated baseline assessment
• SoloSight - dashboards for tutors, families, and schools

The platform covers AQA Combined Science Trilogy (8464) at Foundation Tier, with optional Higher Tier stretch.

Go to register.html and follow the prompts. You will register your own parent account first, then add your child(ren) to it. You will need:

• Your email address (used for sign-in + account emails)
• A password (at least 8 characters)
• Your child's first name, year group, and (optionally) school

If you are a tutor working with multiple students, use register-tutor.html instead.

Sign in to your parent dashboard and click "+ Add another child". Fill in your child's first name and year group (the rest is optional, but the support profile checkboxes help us set up the right defaults for them).

When you click "Add child", we automatically create their account and show you a username + password they can use to sign in. Save these credentials immediately - we do not store the plain password, so if it is lost you will need to reset it.

Your child can then sign in at login.html using "Student" account type and their username + password.

SoloCogs is currently in closed beta. Only Cell Biology is fully open to anyone with an account. The other units (B2-B7, all of Chemistry, all of Physics) are built and tested, but gated to the admin team until we open public access.

If you are a school or tutor who would like early access during the closed beta, please contact us.

On the sign-in page, click "Forgot password?". Enter the email you registered with - we send a reset link that expires in 1 hour. Click it to set a new password.

If the reset email does not arrive, check your spam folder. If it is still missing after 5 minutes, contact us from the email registered on the account.

Sign in to your parent dashboard. Select the child whose password you want to reset. There is a "Reset password" button on their profile area which generates a fresh password and shows it to you the same way it did when you first added them.

Hand the new password to your child and they can sign in immediately. We recommend they change it to something memorable from Account settings → Change password on their first sign-in.

Two-step verification (MFA) adds a 6-digit code from an authenticator app to your sign-in. To turn it on:

1. Install an authenticator app on your phone (Microsoft Authenticator, Google Authenticator, 1Password, etc.)
2. Go to Account settings while signed in to SoloCogs
3. Find "Two-step verification" and click "Set up two-step"
4. Scan the QR code with your authenticator app
5. Type the 6-digit code your app shows to confirm

From your next sign-in, you will be asked for the code after your password.

Sign in, then go to Account settings. The "Change password" section lets you set a new password without needing the current one (because you are already signed in). The new password takes effect on your next sign-in.

Sign in and go to Account settings. There is a "Delete account" option at the bottom. This permanently removes your account and all data we hold about you, in line with UK GDPR Article 17 (right to erasure).

If you are a parent, deleting your account also deletes all of your linked child accounts. There is no way to recover deleted accounts.

A small amount of data is kept for legal reasons (safeguarding records per KCSiE, financial records per HMRC). See our data rights page for details.

See our pricing page for current plan details. SoloCogs offers tiered subscriptions for families, school/tutor, and bulk school deployments.

During closed beta, paid plans are paused. You will not be charged until we open up subscriptions to the public.

Once subscriptions go live, payments will be processed by PayPal (PayPal Europe S.a r.l. et Cie, S.C.A.). You can pay with a credit card, a debit card, or your PayPal balance.

We never see or store your card details - everything financial happens inside PayPal's PCI-compliant environment. You can read PayPal's privacy notice here.

Sign in and go to Account settings → Subscription. You can cancel at any time. Your access continues until the end of your current billing period (no early-cancellation refund).

Cancelling does not delete your account or your child's progress data - it just stops the next renewal. You can resubscribe later and pick up where you left off.

See our Refund Policy. In short: we offer a full refund within the first 14 days of your first subscription, no questions asked.

Beyond that, refunds are at our discretion. If something has genuinely not worked for your child, get in touch and we will sort it.

SoloLab is the lessons + resources side of the platform. Each science unit has multiple sub-units, each with: an objectives list, key words, lesson content (with a plain-language toggle for Higher-tier content), interactive activities, knowledge checks, and exam-practice questions.

Required Practicals get their own virtual-lab environment where students can run experiments safely + generate a PDF evidence report for school.

SoloCognition is our confidence-rated baseline assessment. Students rate how confident they feel about a topic before answering, then we compare their confidence to their accuracy. This produces a "calibration" pattern - finding the places where they think they know it but actually do not, and the places where they know it but lack confidence.

Used at the start of a unit, mid-way, and at the end - tutors and parents can see exactly where attention is needed.

SoloSight is the dashboards side - separate views for parents, tutors, and school staff. Each view shows the right level of detail for that role:

• Parent dashboard - your child's progress + how they are feeling + alerts if something needs attention
• Tutor dashboard - all your assigned students with comparison views + mastery heatmaps
• School dashboard (closed beta) - SEND register coverage + cohort analytics + DPIA-ready reports

When you add a child to your account, you can optionally tick checkboxes for ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyscalculia, visual stress (Irlen), visual / hearing impairment, or English as an additional language. These are the only SEND categories the platform asks parents about.

Based on what you tick, SoloCogs automatically turns on sensible accessibility defaults for that child - dyslexic font, calmer pacing, coloured overlays, slower read-aloud rate, etc. Your child can still change anything from the accessibility panel.

The legal SEND register codes (K/E, EHCP, Pupil Premium, Looked-After-Child) are NOT asked of parents - those are recorded SENCo-side via the school dashboard, with stronger privacy controls.

By default, every account starts on Foundation Tier - which is the route our accessible-by-design approach is optimised for. To switch to Higher:

1. Sign in, go to Account settings
2. Find "Working tier" and select "Higher"

Higher Tier is additive - all the Foundation content stays available too. You will see Higher-only content sections (with a Higher Tier badge) and Higher-only questions inside SoloCognition.

These are the gamified progression features:

• Hall of Legends (HoLL) - a collection of scientists you discover by clicking bold names in lessons. There are 200+ scientists across all the units, including under-represented and modern figures.
• Atomic Vault - a periodic-table-themed XP system. As you earn XP, you unlock elements one by one - starting with hydrogen and working upwards. Hit milestones to unlock avatar items and Cogs reactions.

Neither is required for progression. They are there for students who like that style of motivation.

School deployments go through a brief sales conversation rather than self-service signup, because we need to scope the right tier (per-pupil pricing vs whole-school) and confirm DPA + MIS integration details with your data lead.

The easiest route is to book a 30-min scoping call at a time that suits you - we'll cover pricing, MIS integration via Wonde, DPA, and anything specific you'd like to focus on.

Prefer email first? Send a note to schools@solocogs.co.uk with the school name, rough pupil count, and your role. We respond within two working days.

It depends on the route. Two common patterns:

Pattern 1 - SoloCogs is part of your tutoring service. You sign up for the Tutor pack (£49/month, up to 20 students). Your students sit on your seats; their families don't separately subscribe. Use SoloSight to manage their progress between sessions.

Pattern 2 - SoloCogs is a recommendation alongside your tutoring. The family signs up themselves for the Family bundle or single-child plan, and you use SoloSight as a "shared dashboard" link the parent forwards to you. They pay, you reference.

If you have a student whose siblings ALSO want to use SoloCogs but aren't being tutored by you, the family bundle (up to 2 children on one parent account) is usually the cheapest route - and the siblings get access without needing their own tutor seat.

A tutor referral programme - where you recommend SoloCogs to families OUTSIDE your tutoring practice and earn a referral discount - is on the roadmap. We'll email you when it launches.

SoloCogs syncs school data via Wonde, which connects to most UK school MIS systems (SIMS, Arbor, Bromcom, ScholarPack, etc.). After your DPO approves SoloCogs through the Wonde dashboard, we pull student / teacher / class data overnight.

Students who match a Wonde record by UPN or school email get auto-rostered at sign-up - they enter their UPN and we hydrate their year group, form group, and class memberships from the school's existing data.

Our standard Data Processing Agreement (DPA), based on the ICO's controller-to-processor template, is pre-signed and available on request. Email hello@solocogs.co.uk for a copy.

You can also review our internal data-protection framework before signing:

• Privacy Policy with sub-processor list
• Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)
• Safeguarding Policy
• Incident Response Runbook
• Data Subject Rights process

Cyber Essentials certification is on our roadmap and will be in place before paid school deployments go live. In the meantime we can share our self-assessment evidence pack on request.

Our security posture already covers Content-Security-Policy headers, multi-factor authentication for admin accounts, row-level-security on every database table, encrypted backups, and incident response process aligned to UK GDPR 72-hour notification.

The minimum we need to run the service. Specifically:

• First name (legal + preferred), year group, generated username
• Optional support-profile tags if you ticked any when adding them
• Learning activity - quiz answers, lesson completion, confidence ratings, mastery patterns
• Wellbeing check-ins (Zones of Regulation) if your child uses that feature
• Sign-in timestamps and session data

We do NOT collect: home address, full date of birth (unless rostered from school MIS), photos, location, contact list. We never sell or rent data, never use children's data for advertising, and never train AI models on student input.

Full detail in our Privacy Policy.

If a student types something into a free-text field that suggests they might be at risk (mentions of self-harm, abuse, suicidal ideation, etc.), our safeguarding system logs it and alerts the Designated Safeguarding Lead.

For school accounts, the school's DSL is contacted. For family accounts, the parent is contacted unless contacting them would put the child at greater risk - in which case external safeguarding services (NSPCC, social services) are notified per the Safeguarding Policy.

See our Safeguarding Policy and Safeguarding Flow for the full process.

UK GDPR gives you several rights including the right to a copy of your data, the right to correct it, and the right to delete it. The simplest way to use any of them:

1. Email hello@solocogs.co.uk with subject "Data rights request"
2. Tell us which right you want to use + the email or username on the account
3. We respond within one calendar month (usually much faster)

Full step-by-step guide on our data rights page.

Yes. The ICO's Age Appropriate Design Code (AADC) is the UK's standard for online services children use. SoloCogs is built specifically for children and complies with 14 of the 15 standards (the 15th, about connected toys / IoT, does not apply to us).

Our internal audit against each of the 15 standards is documented and updated annually.

Latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari on desktop. Latest versions of Safari on iPad / iPhone, and Chrome on Android. We test on a representative range of school-issued devices.

Internet Explorer is not supported. Very old Android tablets (running pre-2020 Chrome) may have rendering issues.

Try the following in order - most issues are fixed in the first two steps:

1. Refresh the page (Ctrl+R or Cmd+R)
2. Hard-refresh to clear the cache (Ctrl+Shift+R or Cmd+Shift+R)
3. Try a different browser (Chrome if you were on Safari, etc.)
4. Check our contact page - we may have flagged a known issue

If the problem persists, please tell us what you were doing + which browser + (if you can) take a screenshot. Email it to hello@solocogs.co.uk.

SoloCogs needs cookies and JavaScript turned on to work. The cookies are minimal: a sign-in token, your preferences, and (if you opted in via the cookie banner) anonymous analytics.

If you have strict cookie / script blockers turned on, you may need to allow solocogs.co.uk and rbeejpfrofhtuombbgrj.supabase.co specifically.

Yes - SoloCogs is a Progressive Web App (PWA). On Chrome, look for the "Install" icon in the address bar. On Safari iOS, tap the share menu and choose "Add to Home Screen".

The installed app can show static content offline (cached lessons), but anything requiring sign-in needs a network connection.