Maths builds on itself
A gap that opens early does not stay where it started. It turns up years later looking like something else entirely. Alto is built to find those gaps and close them, a few minutes at a time.
Maths is where we started, because it is where the effect is hardest to miss, though the same holds for any subject that builds in layers. The three people who build it came at the problem from different directions.
James Fisher
Co-founder
James started Alto after sitting down to help his daughter with her Year 6 homework. She was stuck less on the Year 6 work than on what it assumed she already grasped, things like times tables and place value. Gaps like that are common: a class moves on together, whether or not everyone is ready.
She and James spent much of that year filling them in, often an hour a day. There was plenty of material available, yet none of it could summarise a skill concisely, tell him what to practise with her next, or tell him when something had stuck. He is a mechanical engineer, and he thought software ought to be able to do that job better.
Alex Burton
Co-founder
Alex is also an engineer, and he and James had worked together well before Alto. So when James began thinking seriously about whether his idea could actually be built, Alex was the first person he called.
He is a control-systems engineer, and he now builds the part of Alto that pupils never see. Every answer a pupil gives changes what they have solid, what is still shaky, and what they should be given next. Alex designs the reasoning behind those decisions, and the engineering that keeps it steady for one child at home or a whole school at once.
Esther Long
Head of Learning Science
Esther had tried many things to help her own children with maths: tutors, online programmes, workbooks, drills at home. The gains were modest. What rang true was that maths improves like most skills, through small amounts of well-chosen practice done often.
The harder problem was one her training as a clinical psychologist, mostly with adolescents, kept raising: knowing that practice works is not the same as getting a child to keep doing it, and that part is still a work in progress. She leads Alto’s learning science, content and schools work.
How Alto is funded
Alto is built by a small, independent team. Times tables, number facts and spelling are free for every UK school. Our broader subjects and more detailed learning tools are funded through paid family and school plans. See what is free and what is paid.
We may also work with carefully chosen sponsors in future, for example to support The Great Times Tables Race. Any partnerships will be clearly named, and sponsors will never have access to pupil data.
Alto in the UK
Alto has been used in Australian schools since 2024. We’re now bringing it to UK schools, alongside The Great Times Tables Race, and will share UK results as they emerge.
Getting in touch
Write to support@alto.guru.