Just before Kate Heath jet-setted off on a much needed family holiday to Rhodes as the school holidays kicked off, we sat down to talk about what’s been a transformative few years for her scaling edtech business, Gaia Learning.
And the North West business looks very different from the one that first launched in 2019 to support neurodivergent children and those with additional needs who may be struggling to access mainstream education.
Gaia Learning has since developed a specialist online alternative education provision designed around the unique needs of children, ultimately aiming to help them reconnect with education and, where possible, return to the classroom.
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Now, the business is entering its next phase of growth after closing a fresh £400k investment round from GC Angels, NESTA and a syndicate of angel investors to accelerate the development of ‘Bloom’, Gaia Learning’s Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) infrastructure platform to bring some of that specialist support directly into schools.
The latest slice of investment follows Gaia Learning’s first £550k investment round in 2024, led by Nesta Impact Investments alongside GC Angels. In the following year, the business achieved 94% revenue growth while increasing costs by just 22%, and is now forecasting a further 60% growth for the year ending January 2027.
But to understand how Gaia Learning got here, you have to start much closer to home.
Heath’s youngest daughter Poppy, now aged 12, had been struggling in school. Having worked as a marketer in education, Heath had always been keen to explore alternative learning pathways and believed there “had to be another way”.
“We knew Poppy was struggling for quite a long time pre-Gaia Learning, before she was diagnosed as neurodivergent. Then Covid hit – and she was really struggling, especially going back into school,” she tells me.
“I had the belief that there must be another way and there should be something that can help when Poppy can’t be in the classroom so that she can connect to learning and can help bridge her journey back into school.
“That whole market didn’t really exist when we started, not really anyway. Now, it’s almost seen as one of the core quadrants of education.”
Heath describes Gaia Learning’s growing team as a bit like “the Avengers”, often stepping in when a school or family has already tried other routes and a child is still struggling to engage in the classroom.
“Whether a child is in autistic burnout, in a personal crisis, or part of a medical pathway that means they can’t be in the classroom, we try to emotionally re-engage with the child and make them feel safe and feel connected.”
Instead of beginning with grades or simply getting a child straight back into the classroom, Gaia Learning focuses first on rebuilding that connection with education and creating a relationship between the child, an educator and a trusted adult.
Gaia Learning can then continue working with a child even once they are back at school, helping provide continuity through a change that may be difficult.
“You want them to feel emotionally safe and seen. You want them to feel supported,” she says.
That child-first approach is at the heart of how she talks about the business and what she believes makes it different from other edtech platforms that may instead be built primarily around the needs of the education provider.
“We are incredibly focused on that. It’s not just the right thing for the school or what’s the right thing for the local authority. What is right for that individual learner?”
‘Let’s talk big about this’
Heath, who recently turned 42, recalls how signing up for Liverpool-based Baltic Ventures as one of the first businesses on the accelerator programme’s inaugural cohort in 2023 was transformational in company’s scaling journey.
At the time, Gaia Learning was still a small operation and she had little experience of being a tech founder, let alone navigating the world of investment.
“As an intelligent 38 turning 39-year-old woman at the time, I had no idea that you could ask for money. I’d never thought about investment before in my other businesses, so I was gobsmacked to go on the programme and to learn that people were asking for investment without having paying customers,” she laughs.
“So, Baltic was the first opportunity that I had to really say what this business was and what the impact I think it could have.”
The programme also gave her the space to step away from what needed doing that day and think about what Gaia Learning could ultimately become.
“It just gave me the chance to go: ‘Okay, let’s take a breath. Let’s have a cup of tea. Let’s talk big about this.’”
Armed with a growing network of people around her, Heath threw herself into the programme and continued telling both her and Poppy’s story, with the mission behind Gaia Learning becoming clearer along the way.
It ultimately opened the doors to that external investment, but how easy was it for someone who freely admits she had never thought about raising before?
“When I understood the investment infrastructure, the angels were relatively easy. There’s a lot of emotional hook to what we do. Usually someone has a child or cousin or someone they know who has special educational needs, and it was amazing that we got a VC that early on.”
She admits it wasn’t without its challenges and is pretty open about the fundraising process itself.
“We were going through a significant change at the same time. We had every challenge thrown at us, and so how I got that investment is probably ultimate resilience and just trying to keep my head up by telling that big story,” she explains.
“It’s all about a compelling story. Over the last two and a half years, we’ve had data points that sit alongside that, then the ecosystem and the industry awareness.”
This latest fundraising experience has been different. Investors who had previously said they didn’t typically make follow-on investments returned, while Heath says one investor initially offered £75,000 before calling back around an hour later and increasing it to £100,000.
Growing Gaia and growing as a founder
For someone who admits she had “never run a business of this size”, or previously needed a proper P&L or a team on this scale, the past few years have also involved Heath learning alongside the company.
“It’s been a huge, huge learning curve for me,” she admits.
Gaia Learning now has 17 permanent members of staff out of a team of 24, which includes freelance associates, and expects that permanent headcount to grow to around 20 by the end of 2026.
The team works remotely across everywhere from Sri Lanka to Scotland, Wales and Brighton, although the closest member of staff is practically round the corner from her, living on the same estate in Crewe.
“I have a bit of a local recruitment strategy now; it makes it a bit easier to sit in the garden and we’ve got to look at each other!” she teases.
“We have people everywhere from Scotland, Wales down to Brighton. That’s part of the nature of being remote. It’s part of the challenge, but part of the reward as well, with being able to find the talent in all of the locations.”
Gaia Learning’s online alternative learning provision may have driven much of the company’s growth so far, but Heath believes the Bloom platform could take the business to the next level.
Heath describes the SEND infrastructure platform as the “spine” of Gaia Learning. An earlier version has already been used internally, but the company has now completely rebuilt and redesigned it so schools and other education providers can use the technology themselves.
“It has come on leaps and bounds. We have completely rebuilt it out from the first version, redesigned it and have made it so schools can use it as well,” she explains.
“There isn’t that central place that schools can deliver learning through that tracks and evidences everything that happens in the virtual classroom. Bloom is incredibly clever. I’m really proud of it.”
Gaia Learning’s own learners are set to use the new version of Bloom, while pilots are currently underway in Northern Ireland in what Heath describes as the “hottest opportunity”, alongside further pilots in schools across the UK and Spain.
The ultimate goal is that these successful pilots could eventually lead to a wider rollout, while the longer-term plan is to take the Bloom platform “region by region”.
“We’re really in that pilot phase. So it is moving at pace and a bit scary!” she says.
“There is no reason why every school in the world can’t bloom. And to be honest, they will. Whether it’s our Bloom and our infrastructure, or a version of it, they need it,” she says.
“I try to be both ambitious for Gaia Learning, which owns Bloom, and selfless in the sense that kids need it.
“My hope is that every school in the world has the ability and agility to see the impact this can have on kids and to be able to support a learner, wherever they are in their journey, whether it be a medical pathway, special education needs, or burnout. The education system needs that. We are not in 1926, we’re in 2026.”
For a founder who only a few years ago didn’t know businesses like hers could ask investors for money, Heath admits it still feels “crazy” to talk about taking Bloom region by region and potentially much further beyond the UK.
What has changed is how many people around her can see that opportunity too.
“I now have enough people around me saying: ‘okay, it’s going to be really hard, but we get it’. And they’re telling me that this could be a vehicle for us. So I’m having to then believe that. Bloom will be the lever for Gaia Learning and the hope is that the two work together.”
