Exam Papers Plus

Exam Papers Plus had spent years helping over 100,000 families prepare for grammar and independent school entrance exams with high-quality, human-written practice papers. But it sold static PDFs with no feedback loop: families completed materials and Exam Papers Plus never saw the results, with no way to personalize prep or track readiness. In a fragmented exam landscape where every school tests differently, quality preparation felt accessible only to families who could afford private tutoring, and Exam Papers Plus didn’t have the technical team to build the digital product that would change that.

Exam Papers Plus is an established UK education business that has helped over 100,000 families prepare children for grammar and independent school entrance exams, built on high-quality, human-written papers from subject-matter experts. Its model was proven but offline: parents bought downloadable PDFs and practiced at home, with no feedback loop back to the company.

CEO Marc Wells saw the opportunity to build something different, an adaptive digital platform that pairs the company’s deep exam expertise with modern technology to personalize preparation for every student. What Exam Papers Plus didn’t have was the technical capability to build it, so it partnered with OAK’S LAB to take the idea from concept to a running product.

The mandate was a true greenfield build: create Exam Beacon, an end-to-end platform that generates a personalized preparation path for each student based on their target school and exam board, adapts to performance data, and adds AI tutoring and grading, without losing the human-written, expert-reviewed content that is Exam Papers Plus’s edge.

And it had to prove itself fast, going from concept to a live pilot with real families to validate the adaptive algorithm before a wider rollout.

We deployed a full autonomous team of eight, Product, Design, and Tech Leads, four full-stack engineers, and QA, owning the entire lifecycle from discovery and architecture through a dual-track delivery phase to a live pilot with real users. The team worked directly with Marc to shape the vision and translate it into a working product.

Concept to live in months. Exam Beacon went from a blank slate to a live product, with 35 families using it daily before the public launch.

Adaptive algorithm validated. Real pilot usage confirmed the algorithm correctly identifies weak areas, adjusts practice, and improves readiness over time.

AI that levels the playing field. Human-written, expert-reviewed content plus AI tutoring and grading gives every family the personalized support once available only through expensive private tutors.

Built to scale. The architecture supports multiple exam boards, additional exam types, and a growing user base, with expansion already on the roadmap.