Covid took students who were previously literate turned them illiterate. These kids are at least 3 quarters behind on instruction. It’s gotten so bad, some parents have lost hope in teaching their kid.
Covid showed us the big tech divide between kids in cities and villages. Almost half of the students could not read more than a few words, and three-fourths of their reading abilities declined during the lockdown. Many kids (some even older than 10) who previously knew to read and write their mother tongue forget it and need to re-learn. The tools available in local communities for these students are pathetic: torn books described in words they can't understand, unqualified teachers who rarely show up to teach their classes, poor sanitation facilitation facilities, rote learning based assessments, etc. it's frightening to see students regress and parents surrender to their inevitable "fate." the worst part is, covid accelerated this. I've lived in India for 18 years, and the illiteracy and poor education in villages is the biggest problem. - Shreya Hedge, Foundations Team Member
Poverty causes an inability for parents to pay private school fees. this forces parents to send kids to gov-funded public schools which are low-quality education providers that have stronger ties to a childcare center than a school.
teacher quality is poor. 1 in every 5 teachers in India is unqualified to teach (1.94M). they are hired to meet the overpopulated classrooms students are in. the government wanted to increase education so they increased the % of students in class. as they did this, the quality or need of teachers wasn’t considered. when they realized this problem, they began issuing teacher certificates to unqualified individuals as long as they could serve in the class.
- some teachers are unqualified to teach math but are doing it anyway. the government sees this as better than having no teacher.
- schools are underfunded, with 40,000 Karnataka teachers haven’t been paid over the past three months.
- one of the solutions is teaching training. but, the governments budget allocation to teacher training lessening each year. in 2019-20, no $ was given to teacher training.
the root cause of illiteracy is access to quality education at an affordable price.
status quo — the gaps of current solutions
there are three buckets of current solutions in India.
- non-tech solutions like ngo’s which offer libraries or better school facilities for students.
- the second is technical solutions like Prodigy Games which help students complete assignments in more engaging ways.
- the third is gamified solutions like abc mouse. for every 5 math problems you complete, you can gain tokens to play in-app games.
None of these actually get kids excited.
One group that has gotten kids excited is synthesis. They combine complex problem solving with games, and parents/kids love it. This is what great looks like for curriculum and student engagement.
education 100M students by 2030 — our vision
We imagine an education system that:
- helps students master the fundamentals like literacy, numeracy so they can understand they can build strong roots.
- while building community with other students in their class & in classes of other countries because like trees that grow in groves, we want students to experience learning together.
- and a system that’s learning system that’s evergreen, following us around anywhere, in and out of school, with or without wifi.
augmented reality education for 5 y/o to learn literacy
We imagine a module based, AR app, that helps you build skills as you play. What good looks like for science, we want to do this for literacy. It’s embedded in a learning context, highly interactive and visual, and it’s interesting — you can see the parts of the human body pop up on the screen.
We’re testing this out right now but in our early versions, we’ve already got some students excited.
Augmented reality is the first piece of skill building, we’ll be using this for fundamental skills like literacy because of the engagement it offers over normal platforms. But, human development is full stack. In addition to literacy, we want to teach students about mindsets like curiosity, skills like conflict resolution, and use feedback algorithms to personalize their learning.
Without literacy, we don’t get to focus on these items, which is why we’re training it first.
$8/month for the full stack solution
Our current market hypothesis is parents who don’t have access to affordable, quality education will pay $8 a month for our full-stack solution.
- We arrived at this by benchmarking with middle class income ($666 - $884/month), looking at digital entertainment and education apps ($3-$10/month) to see what’s cost comparable, and talked to parents who said $8/month is something they’d be willing to pay for.
- We know parents would be willing to pay for this because of status, quality of ed, and career preparation for their student.
raised a grant & piloting with 1000 users in 2023, 60% paid
On a timeline side, we’ve connected with 25 teachers @teach for india and have 100 students around Shreya’s villages ready to sign up.
working on first ar prototype, we’d like to finish a full module in literacy and teach 100k students by june 2023, 60% of them being paid users.
our goal
Build the future of education where everyone has strong roots so they can own their journey and we can empower more life-saving doctors, engineers, and scientists.