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|  AI is marmite. Parents about to spread it anywayAs the back-to-school season begins, Cyril, built by a British school parent for school parents, launches ahead of the September term
By: LIOT Ltd Parents have already made their minds up in practice. Three in five shoppers used AI this back-to-school season, according to the National Retail Federation in the US, turning ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot into assistants for the shoes, the kit and the uniform. Shopping was always the easy part. The term that follows arrives as emails, portals, letters and group chats. Every back-to-school guide tells parents to stay organised. None of them take on the volume itself. Ask a parent about school communications and the same issues come to light: the parent rep who tells you everything except the thing; the "does anyone know what time pickup is" merry-go-round, asked by someone who got the same email you did and parents sharing opinions rather than fact; the passive-aggressive "gentle reminder" at 22:47; or the trip deadline in paragraph 14 in an email headed Newsletter, Week 6. The comms are the problem. Cyril is built for that, and nothing else. Parents forward whatever the school sends: emails, letters, a photograph of a paper note, a screenshot of the group chat. It comes back as dated actions against the right child. Kit, deadlines, payments, permission slips, trips. Every school in the UK is in Cyril, so no parent hits a dead end at sign-up. Where a school publishes a calendar, Cyril brings it in. Where it publishes nothing, forwarding covers the gap. Failing that, a family can get their dates in by any route that suits them: photograph the term dates on the noticeboard, email the PDF diary, or type a date in by hand. Cyril never touches an inbox. Nothing is connected, nothing is scanned. Parents forward what they choose, and that is all Cyril ever sees. Cyril was built by a mother who resented being the family PA, running her children's school life out of a WhatsApp group instead of one place she could trust. "You don't have to like AI to want your Sunday evenings back," she said. "Parents are already asking AI where to buy the shoes. The harder job is the two hundred things the school sends afterwards and that isn't parenting, it's admin. It's the part that's safe to hand over." Available on iOS and Android. The founder is available for interview. Images available here: https://drive.google.com/ IOS: https://apps.apple.com/ Android: https://play.google.com/ Media Access press1@meetcyril.com Sign-in code: 79f3e0b66e0dd389cf71c4a9dbf38bbf0a937793d6935f9114601392b60a End
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