Eu Ensino - Online Practical Teacher Training Platform

Studies show that over 20% of classroom time is wasted due to classroom management issues, adding to 40 days of learning time lost in one school year, in Brazil and worldwide. Eu Ensino developed a methodology that leverages technology to increase the reach of techniques for social-emotional learning, classroom management, sharing of best practices, and teacher training tracks, providing a scalable solution. With our easy-to-use solution, we empower the trainer as a knowledge multiplier, improving the in-school professional development sessions, transforming them into learning communities and part of a network to solve problems, share ideas and spread innovation. With the techniques, we empower teachers to use their time in the classroom more effectively, increasing learning time. By doing so, we hope to create a ripple effect, increasing students’ access to quality education and the opportunity to compete with more affluent peers, whether in universities or in accessing the job market.

The 2.2 million educators in Brazil received little to no practical training in college, beginning their careers very unprepared. Studies show that over 20% of learning time is wasted due to classroom management issues. For teachers, the frustration builds up and leads to burnout. A 2013 study showed that, in São Paulo State schools alone, 8 teachers resigned every day due to stressful work conditions. The reason why this happens is that teachers, in Brazil and worldwide, are trained for theory, and not practice. The issue became so relevant that the government mandated that one third of a teacher’s (paid) time should be spent with planning and in professional development sessions within their schools. The problem is no one gave guidelines on how to use that time, and the teacher trainer, who used to be a teacher and should lead these sessions, has the same theoretical training as everyone else. So we’re spending 3.8 billion dollars in training sessions that are seen as unhelpful and wasteful. To reinforce this gap, according to the 2018 Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Status, Brazil is the lowest ranked of all the 35 countries (Argentina-31; Colombia-26; Peru-25; Chile-22; Panama-15).

In 2018, we interviewed 400 plus teachers, discovering that teachers need support in actual classroom practices (“what should I DO” solutions). We also ran two pilots: impacting (i) 9 educators and 50 students, and (ii) 25 educators and 850 students to refine our content. In 2019 Q3 we signed a partnership with Castro, our first municipal district, with a POC in 4 schools. We will implement in all 25 schools (800 educators and 6000 students) by August 2020. Our customers are public schools and districts; our users are school-based educators. Our goal is to empower them to change the status quo of currently misused professional development sessions, leading to a ripple effect aiming at improving classroom practices. Our training track gives practical examples of what they need to DO to engage students, create a positive learning environment and leverage student achievement. We will reach them directly, targeting underperforming districts in affluent states, then leveraging our cases and word-of-mouth. In five years, we aspire Eu Ensino to have a presence in all states, impacting 10,000 teachers and ~350,000 students, representing 0.5% of the 2.2MM teachers in Brazil alone. Our reach can include Latin America and even beyond.

Eu Ensino is an easy-to-use solution that empowers the in-school teacher trainer as a knowledge multiplier. We train the trainers virtually to conduct face-to-face professional development sessions. We have developed a methodology that fosters school-based collective learning, bringing practical (and effective!) techniques that are as easy to implement as greeting students at the door. 

First, teachers take a survey to map the school’s main challenges in the classroom. Then, we provide a toolkit for in-school trainers that includes a minute-by-minute guide for how to conduct the meeting, questions to be asked, engaging deliverables, group exercises to share best practices, and a video presenting the research-based technique. Teachers leave the session armed with daily practices to help them better manage their classrooms. Every two months we reassess their progress and their social-emotional needs.

With our methodology, schools are able to become learning communities and part of a network to solve problems. Teachers practice weekly before implementing the techniques in the classroom, in a safe and collaborative environment, led by the trainer. With our content, we empower teachers to tackle progressively more complex issues and we’ve collected positive results from our pilot. With our platform, schools and public school districts leaders have access to real-time data that reflect performance and quality of their teachers.

When asked if they felt frustrated as an educator, respondents answering “never” went from 31% to 57%. When asked if they felt respected by their students, respondents answering “always” went from 43% to 69%. When asked if they were able to complete all planned classroom activities, respondents answering “always” went from 28% to 38%. Results were even better if we only consider teachers who completed 75% of all activities or more. For these, the changes were: 29% to 59% (never frustrated), 41% to 78% (always respected) and 32% to 41% (always complete activities planned).

The first two years are the same for everyone, which makes it completely scalable. This decision was made after our survey indicated that most teachers face the same issues and that their difficulties stem from the most basic knowledge in practical techniques. By doing so, we are starting at the beginning, creating knowledge in small steps and building blocks. We envision that we apply Artificial Intelligence to evolve our training tracks from static to adaptive, so the platform can identify gaps in knowledge and patterns in behavior, and suggest even more tailored content.

When it comes to teacher training, there are 2 current models: in-person training, where companies who provide the service travel to the different locations in a B2B model, and individualized online training, where teachers access training via a platform, in a B2C model. The problem with the first is that it is not scalable. The problem with the second is that it oftentimes is too theoretical and doesn’t provide opportunities for teachers to share their knowledge and leverage their practice collectively.

Eu Ensino is innovative because we are able to combine the best of both worlds. By using technology, we can guarantee the reach of our proprietary methodology, making sure even the most remote school has access to quality teacher training. With our content, we provide in-school trainers with the support needed to conduct a meaningful and effective professional development session in their school, making sure teachers can learn and practice collectively and improve their teaching methods in a safe learning-oriented environment. Our methodology allows for teachers to learn and apply techniques that foster a better learning environment, making sure students are actively engaged in learning and that no opportunities are lost.

On top of that, with the Artificial Intelligence implementation,  our solution will evolve side by side with our customers, creating adaptive and tailored training tracks for the specific challenges of each school and district.

If Eu Ensino:

• Creates a culture of rapid testing and community-based learning in educational districts, 

• Trains teachers on techniques in classroom management and social-emotional learning,

• Provides a space for teachers to reflect on their practices and the opportunity to share experiences,

Then, teachers will:

• Feel more confident (teachers “never frustrated” increase from 31% to 57%)

• Feel more prepared to teach their class (teachers that ”have the tools needed” increase from 34% to 48%) 

As a result, teachers will be able to:

• Manage classrooms more effectively, (teachers “always able to complete planned activities” increase from 28% to 38%),

• Focus more time on pedagogical practices, (time wasted to start a lesson, decreased from 9 to 7 minutes)

• Provide a good learning environment (“students always respect me” increased from 43% to 69%)

As a result, students will be able to:

• Learn the content required for the school year, (focused time increases, giving more time to learn the content),

• Increase their overall performance in schoolwork and standardized tests, (Hanushek & Rivkin 2010): students with a good teacher gain 1.5 grade level while a bad teacher increases 0.5 year for a single academic year)

• Pursue better job or further schooling opportunities, enabling them to break the poverty cycle (World Bank: average global return to a year of schooling is 9%/year)

Data in Outputs and Short-term Outcomes from our pilot, baseline compared to survey completed after two months of implementation.

In 2019 Q2 we signed with Castro, our first municipal district, in which all 25 schools (800 educators and 6000 students) would begin using Eu Ensino. We started the implementation with the 4 all-day schools and its 120 educators, our current platform users, who reach 800 students. In 2020 Q3 we will ramp up to 100% of Castro schools. Our next step is a municipal district with 100 schools and a private foundation with 40 schools as paying customers, both currently in negotiation. In addition, our lead generation process through social media and cold calls is expected to have a 5% win rate in the first year, meaning at least 5 small districts, with around 25 schools each. In one year from now we estimate to be serving 150 schools and 3,500 educators, impacting 100,000 students in Brazil. In five years, we aspire Eu Ensino to have a presence in all states, impacting 1000 schools, 25,000 teachers and ~750,000 students, leveraging our training tracks in a scalable solution. This represents 0.5% of the potential market of 2.2MM teachers and ~200,000 schools in Brazil alone. Our reach can include Latin America and even beyond.

To measure our success, we monitor three goals: our reach, our effectiveness, and our financial health. In order to do that, we keep track of (i) the number of educators actively using the platform, (ii) their reported success in the classroom, (iii) our breakeven target. In the next year, we hope to have reached in Brazil 150 schools, which means roughly 3500 educators and 100,000 students. Our survey indicates that it can take teachers as long as 20 minutes to get students seated, quiet, and with their materials out. In addition, some report feeling frustrated as educators and a lack of respect by their students. In our pilot, we saw a drop in the time taken to start a class and in teacher frustration, and an increase in perceived student respect. In the next year, we expect to replicate and improve these results in our future clients and improve them further for teachers in our pilot. Finally, (iii) we hope to reach our breakeven in January 2022, when the company will become self-sufficient. Considering a five years goal plan: (i) we expect to have a presence in all states of Brazil, impacting 1000 schools, 10,000 teachers and ~350,000 students. We intend to reach at least two Latin America/Caribbean countries, piloting in these different educational systems, (ii) achieving similar results to Brazil, and (iii) maintaining a profitable and healthy business abroad, which can then increase our reach and impact, giving millions of students access to quality education.

We have identified four main barriers: (i) Considering our solution is delivered digitally, there is an infrastructure risk that stems from the limitations Brazilian schools face in accessing basic resources, such as computers and the internet, limiting the use of Eu Ensino. (ii) Considering the implementation of our methodology in its full process and materials, there might be a barrier to having the pedagogical meetings in each school and creating the culture for collective learning. In addition, there is a risk of trainers not following our suggested tracks or teachers not implementing techniques in the classroom, leading to suboptimal results. (iii) There is a financial challenge, considering that our main customers are the public sector, governments can delay/cancel payments for lack of funds, especially now with the Covid19 impact, focusing all efforts and budget on the health system. (iv) Finally, an internal barrier is the current technological knowledge limitation of our team that could halt the expansion, the robustness and continuous improvement of the Eu Ensino solution at this time, limiting our geographical expansion to Latam and our vision of evolving our current static training tracks to adaptive tracks, using Artificial Intelligence.

To mitigate barrier (i) we intend to develop an app version, where teachers can access the content directly on their phones, leveraging the 95% smartphone penetration in Brazil. Another opportunity is to partner with telecommunication operators, so data for the Eu Ensino app is unlimited and embedded in their monthly fee. An additional solution, probably the most common in the foreseeable future, is schools using their one computer and cable internet to print the materials to be used. To mitigate barrier (ii) we intend to closely monitor trainers and teachers progress, with a strong customer follow-up strategy through emails, phone calls and visits for the first 30 schools. We expect this to build a strong community, evolving to an organic interaction, where users will be able to provide the support and incentive needed for educators within the platform in an embedded mechanism. For barrier (iii) we intend to seek contracts with municipalities/states with good credit rating and maintain a healthy breakdown of private schools in our portfolio. Also, we are studying an alternative sales model, including third parties from corporate institutions that would be interested in sponsoring schools/municipalities/states with impact in tax reduction. For barrier (iv), considering the technology of the platform itself will be a competitive differential, we are aware of the need of a CTO soon. We have started working with an HR startup to identify potential best talents in leading the platform improvement project for Eu Ensino.

Every day more than seven million teachers enter a school in Latin America/Caribbean. They represent 4% of the regional workforce, one of the main professions in these countries. Considering the 2018 Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Status, Brazil is the lowest ranked of 35 countries, followed by Argentina-31, Colombia-26, Peru-25, Chile-22 and Panama-15. In 2015 Latin America was on average 2.5 years of schooling behind OECD average (IDB, 2015). Despite all efforts and success in the past decade to increase the educational outreach, this didn’t mean improvements on the quality of education showing Latin American countries as low performers in the last PISA evaluation. This scenario demonstrates a complex but representative and attractive market opportunity for our social business to develop impact.

Our expansion plan to Latin American/Caribbean markets will involve additional investments in terms of: regional sales and support teams, potential customization of our platform, translation of our content to spanish, adaptation to each local educational system and policies. It is also a critical factor to be well positioned in the Brazilian market, with successful key customers demonstrating our traction and robustness to deploy the same level of professionalism in other countries. With all that in perspective, we have a strategic plan where we expect to have the financial stability, customer portfolio and structure in Brazil to allow our expansion in 2023. Our plan is to begin with Argentina or Colombia, considering they also have low teacher status but have the structure in schools for our solution.

Eu Ensino team consists of 14 people: three full-time staff, one part-time staff, two pedagogical consultants and seven content developers.

The organization was founded and is led by Laura Marsiaj Ribeiro, an economist from Brazil who holds a Master in Public Administration from Columbia University. Her background started as an innovation specialist, responsible for developing open-innovation programs in large corporations, and startup programs with the Ministry of Science and Technology in Brazil. At the time, she mentored various startups in Education, Health and Fintech, devising their strategic plans. The MPA allowed her to shift into Education Policy, leveraging all the 4 years of teaching experience she had at a public school in São Paulo. Since Columbia, Laura also gathered experience in Education as a consultant: in the Department of Education in New York, at Vetor Brasil (a non-profit that trains public servants, structuring their Public Finance training program) and at the Lemann Foundation (as an Education Policy expert advising municipal and state Secretariats of Education in Brazil on innovative practices). Combined, these experiences and skills achieved constitute and explain Eu Ensino. 

Fabiana Fujii joined in 2019 as COO with her pragmatic view as an engineer and extensive experience with marketing and sales in renowned global companies with offices in Brazil, such as Roche and DuPont. She is currently working to ensure Eu Ensino reaches the next level in placement strategy, customer acquisition, and client engagement, expanding our positive impact.

The pedagogical consultants and content developers have extensive experience in teacher training, classroom management practices and social-emotional learning. They have proven track records in well-known organizations in the education space.

In 2019 we signed a partnership with Ensina Brasil, which is part of the Teach for All network - a global education nonprofit. Most of our content developers come from this trusted source, which allows them to have an additional income. Still in 2019, we won the Brazil chapter of the Entrepreneurship World Cup, also becoming members of the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN). In the beginning of 2020 we became part of the BrazilLab acceleration program, which is focused on startups who want to partner with the public sector, providing structured mentorship, workshops and networking sessions. 

In the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak, we are partnering with 3 national organizations due to our expertise in delivering quality online training - Sebrae (Public organization that supports entrepreneurs), Undime (Municipal Education Secretaries Union) and Consed (State Education Secretaries Council). We have begun a survey to map the main difficulties educators are facing with teaching in isolation and virtual classrooms, and we are developing content to help educators make the most of this experience, providing guides from our expertise in virtual training and access to free online tools that can leverage their communication with their peers, school faculty and with their students.

Eu Ensino leverages technology through its online platform to increase the reach of research-based techniques and best practices for social-emotional learning and classroom management. Our customers are schools and municipal and state secretariats of education. Our users are school-based educators, such as teachers and trainers. Our beneficiaries are the students, who will have access to better qualified teachers. 

First, teachers take a survey to map their main challenges in the classroom, which we will use to monitor their progress. Then, we provide a toolkit for in-school trainers to follow when delivering the professional development sessions. It includes a minute-by-minute guide for how to conduct the meeting, questions, engaging deliverables, group exercises to share best practices for effective teaching, and a video presenting the research-based technique. Teachers leave the session armed with daily practices to help them better manage their classrooms and, after a week, reflect on their practice. Every three months we reassess their progress and their social-emotional needs.

We charge a monthly subscription fee that has a fixed component per school and a variable component per user. We sell to schools or school districts, with a discount to foster scale and increase capillarity. So far, we have seen an impact in teacher’s practices in the classroom, which has had an effect in increasing teaching time, decreasing educators’ frustration, increasing student respect for teachers and in student engagement. Our theory of change shows these are steps in achieving student learning, although we still don’t have data to show this impact.

We charge schools a monthly subscription fee to access the platform, which has a fixed component of ~U$100/month, and a variable component of ~U$10/month per teacher. Our pricing is within the discretionary budget for training in public schools, a crucial component in ensuring entry at schools without having to undergo long procurement processes. For this initial phase, it will ensure a steady revenue stream, in addition to private schools. Once we can bid for government contracts, we will sell to districts and achieve scale. In the long-run, we expect that teachers will also be able to join as individuals, paying a ~U$10 monthly fee. 

In 2018, we interviewed 400+ teachers and found that the issues faced in the classroom were more or less the same. We then developed our methodology that addresses the most pressing needs in a training track that is the same for everyone in the first 2 years. This allows for our solution to be completely scalable and leverages our margins. The variable costs associated with more clients using the platform represents only a small fraction of your pricing, so once the fixed cost of content development is amortized, we can expect a profit margin of around 30%. We expect that to happen in two years. Once we hit that target, we are able to amortize further, reaching a higher profit margin.

After participating in the EdTech Challenge (2018), Entrepreneurship World Cup Finals (2019) and the BrazilLab Acceleration (2020), our team has learned that all networking, mentoring and prize fundings offered throughout these programs are catalysts to our development. The TPrize differentiates from every opportunity we have seen, and is a 2020 priority for Eu Ensino, because it focuses on solutions to close the skills gap and promote lifelong learning opportunities across Latin America and the Caribbean. This is exactly what we believe in, our mission and values, our business strategy to social impact.

We believe the TPrize Challenge will provide us with the knowledge, expertise and potentially the resources needed to take our platform development to the next level. This is our current barrier to full scalability and one of the main operational time-consuming activities of our team. While the MVP in Google Classroom has been crucial to the understanding and development of our product, we have come to the conclusion that it is not a sustainable solution and is too limited in functionalities for what we want to achieve. This prize is crucial in securing funding for our 2020 ramp-up of our Artificial Intelligence initiatives.

Finally, the international exposure can help us understand best practices and generate meaningful connections to drive our business even further. Eu Ensino began with the mission to change education in Brazil, but we aspire to have an impact worldwide. Join us in our mission to transform the lives of millions of people!

- Varkey Foundation - Education: This is a family foundation that believes in quality education for every child. They work to build the capacity and status of teachers to ensure that the quality of teaching is enhanced, and outcomes will improve. A partnership with this organization would not only validate our quality and mission, but also expand our reach globally.

- Yunus Foundation - Social Business: Peace Nobel Prize in 2006, Mohammed Yunus developed the concept of social business and found the Grameen Bank. The foundation works on growing and supporting social businesses to solve the world’s pressing problems, so to have them as partners could improve our social business model to impact more rapidly and in a sustainable way.

- Google Suite for Education: Google is Google, its solutions are in our daily activities, in our mobile phones, within all ranges of social and economical levels. This education suite proposal could be the perfect fit to have a full solution when approaching schools and districts.

- Artificial Intelligence experts and web developers: As we mentioned in our barriers and why we are applying to TPrize, our platform development is critical and we understand this is a specific and technical knowledge our current team doesn't have.