School Readiness Assessment

Net enrolment rates in primary education of Bangladesh has reached over 90% but the quality of education still questionable. In brief, millions children have right to stay in school for years but what they learn is not considered. Public schools average student to teacher ratio improved 50:1 in 2007 to about 40:1 in 2016 but in some districts of Dhaka, this rate is 1:120. High population straining to discover the potential of children which is the main duty of teachers.

Many children in Bangladesh live in poverty and starting school with lack of skills. Scanning school readiness can use to predict future success and drop out rates of students. Moreover, this assessment is a way to discover potential of each child and take precautions for gifted children and children with learning difficulties alike. This solution can use to unlock potential of children, increase self-efficacy and motivation of students. 

World out of the school changed remarkably but school is remaining same as last century. Any basic health care service in the world have fundamental blood test at least to suggest a treatment. Even in the most developed countries schools’ when a student start at school we do not know other than identity card information, which is not essential for learning. Schools that have high teacher quality can recover this lack of information in short time but many students in Bangladesh do not have that chance.

Teacher shortage and teacher quality are one of the other barrier for improving skills in students. Bangladesh declared that %40 percent of public primary school teachers haven’t got university degree (Ministry of Primary and Mass Education of Government of Bangladesh, 2015). In addition to that, less than 50% of the primary teachers are proficient in teaching (AsiaDevelopmentBank, 2018).

The total number of students in primary and secondary level is higher than 25 million. This huge system need to forecast future for the sake of all stakeholders’ students, parents, teachers alike. PEDUDI School Readiness Assessment can support this huge system by providing relevant information for literacy skills and help for policy making in education. 

Dr. Tunalı's area of research has mainly focused on “Futures of Education”. This quest has taken her to various parts of the world from South Asia to East Africa to conduct projects on futures of education. Last year, she had a unique experience in Bangladesh, where she had the opportunity to work in schools to conduct a trend analysis for education in Bangladesh.  This research project, was awarded by the Centre for Genocide Studies (CGS), University of Dhaka, and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung as 2018 Fellowship on the “Futures of Education''(https://jfsdigital.org/2019/03/28/educational-trends-in-bangladesh/ 

Education is the most influential tool against poverty but high proportion of illiteracy rates and shortage of teachers are making this situation even harder in Bangladesh. As mentioned at the above, teachers have lack of pedagogical knowledge so they are not able to support young students learning and motivation to school. With a large scale of assessment, we can provide valuable information for teachers to design their instruction, for schools to improve their curriculum and for Ministry of Primary and Mass Education of Government of Bangladesh to evaluate quality of education. This information can also be useful for research of Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics (BANBEIS). 

PEDUDI School Readiness Assessment is a mobile app powered by AI and designed to evaluate basic skills for literacy. Children from 5 years to 8 years are best for the target audience to scan potential learning difficulties and accelerated learners. 

This assessment procedure focus on four different developmental skill that are essential for learning literacy.

1) Visual Perception (color perception and color constancy, shape perception and shape constancy, spatial relations, visual analysis and synthesis, visual closure, visual conceptualizing, visual discrimination, visual figure-ground distinction, visual memory, visual pattern-following, visual sequence etc.)

2) Auditory Perception (auditory closure, auditory conceptualizing, auditory discrimination, auditory localization, auditory memory, auditory sequential memory, phonological awareness etc.)

3) General Knowledge/ Vocabulary

4) Writing Ability (fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination etc.)

PEDUDI School Readiness Assessment includes nearly twenty sub-skills under these main domains and more than ninety gamified psycho-educational assessment scenarios.

Traditional assessment tools have a predetermined question pool for all children and most of them have do not give detailed information because of ceiling effect. This tool is distinguished among its ancestors with creating personalized assessment path.  AI system in the tool recreate questions for each child and reorganize sequence of questions in terms of item difficulty. At the end of the test, none of the children gets same questions in same order and tool provides personal report for each child. This tool is designed to use in many different languages (Turkish, English, Bengali etc.)

Normally, an individual assessment lasts for 1 or 1,5 hour per child and cost more than $300. This mobile app will reduce this evaluation time and cost and can give chance to make cross- comparative analysis. Whole assessment tool designed as a voyager story to gamification. During the assessment child will travel all around the world and pass over levels. They do not feel like they are tested and voice instructions lead them to follow procedures till the end.  The hidden agenda in this assessment is to gain global awareness to young children and teach them worlds’ common cultural heritage (historical places and important geographical places in the world etc.) 

This solution is innovative because it is breaking the traditional rules of psycho-educational assessment and reorder the assessment procedure itself.

A psycho-educational assessment is an evaluation conducted by a child or counseling psychologist to determine whether a child has developmental and/or learning challenges. A regular assessment provides an in-depth exploration of a child’s strengths and weaknesses compared with their peers with predetermined norms of the area (country norms).

Most of the traditional tests measure one ability and a professional have to apply it. PEDUDI assessment measures many sub-skills and gamified voice instructions lead user to continue. Here we can use the analogy of sphygmonometer (blood pressure cuff) or blood sugar test kit. For a long time people needed to go hospitals for every reason but today many basic tools help us in our homes. More over nowadays deep-tech companies especially in health sector is developing new device/ software powered by AI to transform health sector.

Accordingly, PEDUDI assessment tool is a valuable endeavor to transform psycho-educational assessment with being cheaper, reachable tool for personal use and pave a way for large-scale assessment for policymaking.

In November 2018 Dr. Tunalı conducted a study in Dhaka. She conducted natural observations in three different kinds of school in Dhaka (a public school, a semi-private school and a private school) and interviewed with teachers and scholars who were knowledgeable both in sociology, education and economics to obtain detailed information and make connections between social context and schools (N= 16). According to the results of study, there are two main trends. These are (1) Poverty: For last decade, economic development is around 7% per year and this is one of the highest rates in the world according to OECD but, more than 80% of the population live with less than $2 a day. (2) Knowledge intensive economy:  Population of youth is very high in Bangladesh. In addition to that, unemployment rates are dramatically high too. There is a huge mismatch among population, job market and education.

These results show us the vicious cycle of the Bangladesh. As an educational science expert Dr. Tunalı states that, it is too late to use conventional tools, devices and solutions in this region. Normally, outcomes of educational projects observe in long run. However, this time we have to try procedures quicker, cheaper to apply immediately and evaluate outcomes in short time. 

Nowadays, we are testing PEDUDI School Assessment test in the field. It will be on App Store and Play Store by January 2020. In one year, we will be serving to 100.000 child in Turkey and in five years we will be serving to 5 million child in the world. 

PEDUDI qualified to ICUBE Acceleration Program to reach English  EdTech market and by February company will start negotiations in London. https://www.icube.com.tr/en/

PEDUDI Information Technologies Inc. established on April 2019 and it has five main goals/

• Solve challenges of the education
• Consider personal differences in learning
• Design or use innovative technology
• Provide social good
• Support education of children from disadvantaged regions. 

The expected learning outcomes of the cohort of children and youth who are of school age in 2030 indicates that %69 of 264 million school age children will not learn primary level skills and %23 will just learn basic primary level skills in low-income countries. On the other hand, %70 of 198 million school age in high income countries will learn minimum secondary level skills. This global learning crisis will increase if we do not consider doing something because some schools are teaching coding and AI to their students. On the other hand, millions of people in the world is not able to read and write.

As Richard Rorty states, these inequalities between our children’s fortune and those of other children as neither the Will of God nor the necessary price for economic efficiency, but as an evitable tragedy. With this vision, my company will continue to design new products to serve social good and support learning for all. Not provide privilege for a selected audience. 

Our company have enough investment to provide funds for marketing and other expenses. Therefore, there is no financial barrier for us for the next one year. For the aim of reaching 100.000 child in Turkey is very doable because in Turkey there are 4 million children between 5-8 years. PEDUDI has a good reputation in Turkey and considerable network.

Our team is not huge but consist of professionals in their field with enthusiasm. For now, we are an infant company but spent great effort develop PEDUDI School Readiness Assessment tool. 

The only barrier for us to overcome is, marketing at global market. With the help of developments in e-commerce and mobile application industry, this can be easier than before. 

Although the tool designed to adaptable in variety of languages, conducting studies to adaptation of different culture and  languages might be a problem. 

For the next five years, we would like to be an active member of global educational technology market. Nowadays, PEDUDI selected as a finalist at The Great Entrepreneur Games, Turkey that organized by UK’s The Department for International Trade's (DIT) (https://www.bcct.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/20191023-GEG-Flyer-270819.pdf). In addition to that, PEDUDI also selected ICUBE Acceleration Program (http://icube.com.tr/en/) to pitch at UK on February. In the near future, I am sure we will have more opportunity to make international connections.

For the cultural adaptation and language, trials can be done under small projects in different countries with support of local NGOs. 

With the total number of 25 million students, Bangladesh is a huge sector for educational technology. According to Dr. Tunalı's observations in the field, from school management tools to learning management systems, schools are in need of technology in many facets.

The most important thing is to support teachers with reliable tools. Although schools are not well equipped with technology, nearly every teacher have a smart phone. Mobile apps can be an easy and cheap solution to support teachers’ every day classroom activity.

School Readiness assessment is designed as a mobile app so, teachers will not need training and additional device rather than their smart phone to implement. 

Because of the low quality of public school education parents look for new solutions. One of the results show that the number of Coaching centers and private tutoring increased. These institutions become more important than regular schools. Sommers (2011) also mentioned her report for perception among parents that children at government schools and community schools must attend private tutoring in order to learn well (p.22). Nath (2007 as stated in Sommers (2011)) claims that nearly 38% of primary-aged students pay for private tutoring, with percentages climbing from roughly 25% of students in 1st grade to over 50% of students in 5th grade with boys much more likely to receive this support than girls (44% versus 31%) (p.28). The reason behind the coaching centers is competitive structure of education system. The data according to BANBEIS (2018) indicated that for Ebtedayee Education Completion Examination (EECE) between 2010 and 2016, pass rates were increased from 82.01% to 96.08%. Primary Education Completion Examination (PECE) between 2010 and 2016, pass rates were also increased from 88.84 to 98.51 (Amin & Greenwood, 2018). Moreover, nearly all public schools are running double shifts and the teacher–student interaction time is almost 50% lower than the international standard of hours (900–1,000) per year (ADB, 2018). 

In this circumstances there is a need for tools to support educational process.  Education is not only consist of subject matter memorizing and rote learning but any contribution to process (diagnosis or implementation) will rapidly show positive effect.  

Ersin Özüağ, Co-Founder -CEO, Computer Vision, AI, AR/VR/MR  MSc, Electronics and Telecom. Eng. 

Dr. Sevinç Tunalı, Co-Founder- Product Development, Child Development, Ed-Tech PhD, Educational Science 

Salih Özcan, Co-Founder- Software Design BSc, Electronics and Telecom. Eng. 

Muhammed Özekinci, Co-Founder- 3D Designs and Animations BSc, Electronics and Telecom. Eng. 

Büşra Yüksel,  2D Graphics, UI/UX BSc, Graphic Design 

Yağmur Çatak, Software Design. BSc, Computer Eng. 

Halil Erdoğmuş, Co-Founder- Business Development (Founder of E-bebek Inc. https://www.e-bebek.com/en/kurumsal/is-konseptimiz/)

Mustafa Keçeli, Co-Founder – Investor, Albaraka Turk Finance  

1) Our software development team is very powerful and our team has a perfect combination of technology and education knowledge.

2) Focus of the project has perfect match with main aims of the company:

• Solve challenges of the education
• Consider personal differences in learning
• Design or use innovative technology
• Provide social good
• Support education of children from disadvantaged regions. 

3) On the other hand Dr. Tunalı is an experienced project leader and conducted many projects not only in Bangladesh (Dhaka) but also in Tanzania (Zanzibar- Assalam Community Foundation-https://twitter.com/DrSevincTu...), Thailand, USA, Germany etc. This experience will facilitate to conduct project on field as well. 

1) AlBaraka Turk Bank invested PEDUDI on April 2019 to establish.

2) TÜSİAD* organized an event and Project Competition on September 2019 as Digital Transformation in Industry. BAYER Turkish Chemical Industry Inc. applied this program to develop a project in health literacy. Health Literacy early ages is so crucial to support healthy habits in children.  PEDUDI’s project on health literacy was selected by BAYER to apply. PEDUDI is currently working on the health literacy mobile app for 7-12 children.

*the Turkish Industry and Business Association (Turkish: Türk Sanayicileri ve İş İnsanları Derneği), is Turkey's top business organization. Founded in 1971, TÜSİAD is a voluntary, independent, non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting public welfare through private enterprise.

Key Resources: 1)Local Researchers or teachers to describe project and benefits to learners and teachers.

2)If we conduct a wide research to monitor skills of students in one region, teachers smart phones will not be enough. We will need to buy or rent some amount of tablet PC’s. Amount of tablet PCs’ will be depended on the wideness of the study and number of targeted audience.

Key Partners/ Stakeholders: 1)In many countries before conducting a research in schools researchers have to get permission from local or central educational administrators. In Bangladesh case there are 25 different school types and many of them are not under inspection of Ministry of Primary and Mass Education of Government of Bangladesh. 

2)Local NGOs such as BRAC Education Program (BEP), Teach for Bangladesh, Save the Children in Bangladesh, PEN International in Bangladesh can be stakeholder to this Project.

Key Activities: 1)Education of field researchers. 2)Assess students 3)Give feedback to teachers, schools and districts (skill gaps, learning difficulties, gifted, and any developmental problems) 4)Share the results with targeted audience (parents, policy makers etc.) 5)prepare reports for schools to improve curriculum 5) prepare reports for government to monitor teacher accountability and precautions for the future.

Type of Intervention: Assessment of students from  5 to 8 years old.

Channels: Via schools.

Segments: Students, Parents, Teachers, Schools, Local governments and Ministry of Education.

Value Prepositions: Tiger Challenge Fund

Cost Structure: Most of the budget will spend to Local Staff (researchers in the field) and cost of Tablet PCs’. 

For the financial sustainability, there can be a combination of fee-for service model and the low-income client as market model.

Although the economic growth of Bangladesh is one of the highest rates in the world according to OECD but more than 80% of the population live with less than $2 a day. In addition to that poverty has a considerable impact on children’s schooling, in terms of enrollment, participation, attendance, and success. In these circumstances, low-income client as market model is must to have.

On the other hand number of Coaching centers and private tutoring is so high in Dhaka area. This means some parents get used to pay for quality education so fee-for service model can apply to that audience to cover expenses for all. 

Tiger IT Foundation can help us in three ways.

• Test the assessment tool in different region: None of the psycho-educational tools can be designed totally culture free. However, applying this tool in different settings will lead us to design globally and improve the tool itself.
• New data from different regions: new data from this region will support the AI algorithms behind the assessment tool, make better assessments and decrease the bias.
• Test the digital psycho-educational assessment procedure: knowing whether the innovative testing procedure work in different setting will be helpful to design new tests. This assessment procedure can easily adapt to different problems such as assessment of skills for vocational guidance can help skill mismatch in the future. 

BRAC Education Program (BEP), Teach for Bangladesh, Save the Children in Bangladesh, Reaching out of School Children (ROSC), PEN International in Bangladesh, Secondary Education Quality and Access Enhancement Project, Basic Education for Hard to Reach Working Children Project, Life Skills Education for School Youth and Adolescents at Secondary Level, Underprivileged Children’s Program etc. are all important NGOs and Projects conducted to improve Education in Bangladesh. 

In addition to that major joint financing development partners had been Sweden, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Canada, Department for International Development of the United Kingdom, Australia, European Union, Japan International Cooperation Agency, Global Partnership for Education and the World Bank used to conduct projects in this region. Moreover, Bangladesh’s education sector is a major target of Asian Development Bank assistance. Any of these NGO's or organizations can be helpful for this project.