Examinaite is an AI-powered Leaving Cert revision app designed to save students hours of study time. It was developed by maths teacher Gavin Doyle and formally launched in September.
“We believe that technology should make learning and evaluation more accessible, efficient and effective for everyone involved and our aim is to revolutionise exam preparation through the power of AI,” says Doyle.
“As a teacher, I’ve had classes of 30 students with 30 different levels and abilities, and I simply couldn’t offer them all a personalised learning experience,” he adds.
“Examinaite helps students find out what type of learner they are and offers them course content in their preferred learning method, whether that’s visual, auditory, kinaesthetic or through reading. We want to make learning more engaging, so we gamify the learning process by progress tracking and keeping students focused with goal setting.”
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The idea for Examinaite began to take shape in the summer of 2024 when Doyle went to the US to spend time with a friend who had co-founded a venture capital company in California.
“I was constantly around founders and tech entrepreneurs, and their drive and working culture started to rub off on me. They encouraged me to change direction and get into tech, so I started teaching myself to code,” he says.
“I was planning on moving into software, and with no formal computer science background, I started doing projects to beef up my portfolio. Examinaite was one of these projects. I shared it with my teacher friends, they shared it with their students, and it grew legs. By the end of the last school year, we had over 1,000 users. My network of teachers has been invaluable in terms of feedback and ensuring the quality of the content we’re providing.”
Doyle decided to quit teaching and go full-time into developing the business, and last summer, he brought two experienced software engineers on board whose expertise helped refine and round out the platform. Both engineers already work for big tech companies, and as Doyle couldn’t afford to hire them, he offered them equity instead.
Hard cash investment has been minimal to date, as the co-founders have done all the heavy lifting, and the app is already generating a small income.
The next step is to apply for pre-seed funding from Enterprise Ireland, which also provided Doyle with a small stipend while he completed the New Frontiers programme for budding entrepreneurs at TU Tallaght. Before New Frontiers, Doyle had participated in the NDRC pre-accelerator, which he says provided the push he needed to take the plunge into the start-up pool.
Examinaite covers all Leaving Cert subjects with questions tailored to suit foundation, ordinary and higher level papers. On the consumer front, it is aimed at individual students and on the business front at teachers (to create customised exam papers), schools, and those providing grinds.
“We have every single State exam question for every subject organised by topic, and our smart adaptive feature allows us to create infinite exam-style questions tailored to students’ knowledge gaps so they’re getting quality practice,” Doyle says. “We have an auto corrector that mirrors the State examinations commission’s marking schemes, and we’re currently working on developing one of the first ever voice bots that speaks ‘as Gaeilge’, to help prepare students for their oral exam.”
As a young teacher, Doyle had worked in a cross-section of schools and quickly became aware of the socioeconomic differences between them. “In affluent areas, parents could afford to pay for add-ons such as grinds, whereas in less well-off communities, there was simply no money for extra tuition. Some of the kids I taught could barely afford a lunch, never mind grinds, and that didn’t sit well with me,” says Doyle, who has designed Examinaite’s pricing structure to help level the pitch.
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The entry plan is free to use. Thereafter, the basic plan costs €2.99 a month and the premium is €6.99 a month. The main difference between the plans is the amount of access given to the different features.
“In terms of personalisation, one-to-one grinds are the best a student can get. However, with these costing up to €100 an hour, only the top per cent can pay. Other online grind platforms are charging from €1,000, creating an education gap between those who can afford to pay and those who cannot. I’ve never been happy that being unable to afford grinds could be a factor in how well someone did in the Leaving Cert,” Doyle says.
For now, Examinaite’s focus is on the Leaving Cert, with the Junior Cert to follow, but Doyle says the model will travel and he has the UK’s State exams in his sights.
“Examinaite is different to other exam prep solutions because they rely on finite and static exam-style questions, whereas we offer dynamic questioning to build students up to exam level,” he says.
With teachers at all levels grappling with the ramifications of AI in the classroom, Doyle spotted an opportunity to add a second string to Examinaite’s bow, and the company is now offering AI training programmes for teachers.
“We recently partnered with AI detector GPT Zero to help get teachers up to speed on AI, as being able to identify AI-generated material is important, especially with assessment and project work becoming an increasing feature of the curriculum.”
Doyle says the hardest part of the start-up process for him has been identifying what elements need the most attention and in what order. “There is just so much to do, you have to learn to prioritise,” he says.
“Overall, though the supports have been fantastic and having access to mentors and weekly accountability on the NDRC and New Frontiers programmes has been invaluable.”
