Leading Our Path

In high-income (HIC) countries, 9 out of 10 children can read by the age of 10. In the rest of the world, where 90% of all children live, this falls to just 3 in 10 children. This means that the vast majority of children worldwide do not achieve foundational literacy and numeracy before the age of 10. 

Once opened, this gap is hard to close. The impact is lifelong, compounding across further schooling and beyond. The global learning community needs to work together to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), improving student foundational literacy and numeracy and laying the educational foundations for increased future success. 

Most primary-age children, no matter where in the world, are enrolled in school.  This means that government-run school systems already reach almost every child. The structure exists; we should use it. 

Any educational solution should therefore focus on improving learning outcomes within the current government school systems. Rather than start from scratch, it should equip governments with the resources and tools to enhance the systems that are already in place. It must source impactful content from the global educational community, build integrated assessments and provide analytical tools to effectively improve the educational outcomes within these existing systems.

Education is an ecosystem. From students, to teachers, to trainers – right up to the Minister of Education – the work of many stakeholders influences learning outcomes. 

Long-term change to learning requires a coordinated effort, spanning all areas of education. An effective solution must therefore be systemic; it must support key stakeholders at all levels, providing each of them with the specific resources they need to improve their educational impact.

We must continuously raise learning outcomes for students. Rather than supporting children in just one grade or in just one year of their schooling, educational solutions must extend across years. They must ensure that each student receives quality content and teaching (and the resultant chance to increase their learning outcomes) not once, not twice, but in as many years of their education as possible. The cumulative impact of this support is the most effective way to raise long-term learning outcomes of all students globally to the highest possible level.

Learning content in educational interventions must evolve constantly. As students progress through their school years, the support they receive will have a cumulative effect on their learning outcomes. 

For example – if an educational intervention supports students in the first three years of their primary education, their third grade teacher will receive third-grade classes at three possible levels. Those who have never received extra support from an educational intervention, those who have already benefited from it for one year, and those who have worked with it for two years. For each of these levels, the teacher will need different content, different lesson plans, and different approaches. 

An effective educational intervention will therefore iterate and continuously update its learning material, measuring class outcomes and tailoring content according to student levels.

To deliver quality education to all, we must be able to scale quickly.

According to the World Bank, at current rates of progress, meeting SDG4 and eliminating learning poverty by 2030 is out of reach. This is largely driven by the high cost of interventions and the lengthy methods of assessing effectiveness. To speed up scaling and reach our goal, we must therefore reduce operational costs and integrate rapid testing into our systems.

Digitalisation is the key here. Digitalisation allows first for the easy adoption of further geographical locations and thousands more students, second for the instant integration of new content, and third for the daily collection of vast quantities of assessment data to instantly measure impact.

Technology only works when deeply integrated into the reality of the people that it is meant to benefit. While technology is a powerful tool, we strongly believe that it cannot – and should not – replace the essential role of educators. This means two things: 

First, any technology-based educational solution must be enjoyable and easy to use, genuinely useful and appropriate for all variations of classroom settings. 

Second, people are needed to implement tech-based education. To ensure successful integration and continued effectiveness of our platform, we must provide extensive hands-on operational support for teachers as well as the education officials supporting them. 

Solving the global learning crisis requires the global learning community. We need to work together to design an education system that works for every subject, grade, language and cultural context. The solution is vast, and the solution must be collaborative. 

To facilitate collaboration, we are committed to building an open global platform, allowing stakeholders to share resources and collectively drive educational innovation. Since the platform is open, student data must be protected in a “privacy by design” approach.

AI will change education at a fundamental level. Harnessing it will allow student pathways to be personalised according to their level, teacher training to be tailored to their classes, and content to be created automatically.

For new and emerging technologies to be successfully incorporated into educational systems, their impact must be continuously measured so that ethical practices in AI deployment can be prioritised. Embedding iterative processes and assessment methodology into learning platforms themselves, allowing for the real-time measurement of AI’s effectiveness, is the most time-efficient and cost-effective way to do this. 

To design and scale cost-effective structures, we must do two things. First, we should rely on very few physical resources, operating effectively with as little as one device per classroom. Second, we should integrate seamlessly into existing technical structures, such as EMIS. These cost-effective implementation features allow us to be financially sustainable, therefore promising longer term support for students.