Taleemabad Learning Ecosystem

Even before the pandemic, Pakistan’s education system was crippled. 32% of all children were out of school - most had never enrolled and a big chunk had dropped out. The World Bank estimates that a further 930,000 children will drop out as a result of the pandemic.

To mitigate this, we are building the Taleemabad Learning Ecosystem where; children wake up in the morning and watch Taleemabad on TV to get introduced to the day’s lesson; go to a Taleemabad school where Taleemabad trained teachers use detailed lesson plans and Taleemabad content to teach; children come back home and watch a repeat broadcast on TV; and later in the evening their parents are notified through the Taleemabad app about what their child studied and how they can cement their learning using the Taleemabad content on the app; ensuring that learning never stops, and is available at the child’s convenience.

At 22.8 million, Pakistan has the second-highest number of out-of-school children in the world - 17.5 million who had never enrolled and 5.3 million who had dropped out - with lack of interest, archaic pedagogy and underskilled teachers being major reasons for this. The World Bank estimates that nearly 1 million more children will drop out as a result of the pandemic and with education systems failing to provide quality education even before the pandemic - 40.9% of children couldn’t read a simple sentence in their native language even after completing their primary education - the problem has only worsened since schools closed.

Although the government’s response has been commendable, it is fragmented and unorganised in its delivery. It lacks the structure needed to ensure that learning continuity isn’t disturbed and that children are engaged whether they study in or out of school.

The Taleemabad Learning Ecosystem ensures that learning never stops and does so in a seamless and sustainable manner for school owners, students, teachers and parents. The ecosystem provides a “school starter pack” to educated people who are otherwise unemployed or underutilised and empowers them to open low-cost private schools that employ women from the community to teach in the schools. The teachers are provided training and detailed lesson plans that provide them minute by minute instructions on how to effectively conduct a class, to ensure quality and consistent education. The lesson plans employ; cartoons and games from the Taleemabad series (aligned with the single national curriculum and endorsed by the Ministry of Education); activities that promote interdisciplinary learning; and assessments designed to promote lower and higher order of learning. All of this is done on an LMS accessible to teachers, students, school administrators and parents.

Out of school, children can watch Taleemabad broadcasted on TV (the broadcast schedule is aligned with the school’s schedule) or continue learning on their parent’s smartphone through the Taleemabad Learning App (parents are sent updates on what was taught in school and how they can consume the content on the app to further cement learning).

At one end of the education spectrum, Pakistan hosts a substantial number of out of school children. On the other end, even after completing 16 years of education, many are unemployed or employed in jobs they are overqualified for. This presents a unique problem where Taleemabad can help bridge the gap to provide a solution for both problems. This educated population is empowered by Taleemabad to open schools and run them as a viable business while enrolling children who were out of school or may have dropped out. Also within these communities, there are teachers who are underskilled and/or undertrained. Taleemabad helps train these teachers by providing them with detailed lesson plans to help them conduct classes, eventually picking up the skill and becoming excellent teachers and community builders.

However, keeping the context of these children in mind, it is important to provide them with an opportunity to learn any time and anywhere in a manner that keeps them engaged in learning. To this extent, Taleemabad provides them with an opportunity to learn through broadcast or through the Taleemabad Learning App. All of this is powered by technology as the data collected through the LMS in schools is held in the same repository as the data collected through the Taleemabad App on parents’ smartphones. This helps us combine data collected from both sources and provides us with a holistic view of a child’s learning and what each child may require to remedy learning deficiencies.

This means that learning never stops and the quality of education is never compromised while delivering the solution at a minimal cost.

Our solution is aligned with the first, second and fourth challenge dimensions. We use a multimodal approach - broadcast, apps and digitally-enabled Taleemabad Schools - to ensure that students in a physical, remote or hybrid setting are all catered to and delivered multidisciplinary education in an engaging manner to attain the 21st-century skills needed to thrive. In schools, we provide teachers with the necessary tools and train them to acquire the necessary skills to improve the efficacy of their teaching methodology by standardising instruction, while constantly monitoring each student’s progress, creating remedial learning pathways and updating parents, through the LMS.

38% of the entire student population attends low-cost private schools. During the pandemic, many of these schools closed due to a lack of financial runway. However, many persevered by using Taleemabad’s content and the Taleemabad App. When we noticed this trend, we consolidated all of our learnings from the past 6 years, built a team that was equipped to deliver quality education in schools and created a low-cost school starter pack. Within 6 months, we developed the solution and have piloted it in 4 schools in and near Islamabad. Thus far, even through unpredictable lockdowns and subsequent school closures, Taleemabad schools have thrived and have been able to provide education to their students, and while many children were dropping out of school, Taleemabad schools saw an increase in enrollment - in one case prompting the school owner to shift to a larger building to accommodate the influx of new students.

As former students, and now teachers and education entrepreneurs, we know that focusing on one stakeholder to solve a very complex problem is not going to cut it. Our solution enables and targets multiple stakeholders; from teachers to students to parents to school owners. Doing so means that our product is diverse:

1. Our contextual videos, books, gamified tests, and activity-based learning ensure that students remain interested in their education and know-how to apply it to improve their lives.

2. Our teachers are given lesson plans that guide them on how to conduct their class, minute by minute. The technology (LMS system) is also equipped with digital teacher training, so that teachers get their training when they need it, at the comfort of their schedules.

3. Our administrators know the ins and outs of their school: attendances, fees collection, parent communication etc because of our platform streamlining that process.

4. Parents get in-time information about their child’s progress on the mobile app. Additionally, the mobile app enables them to get involved in their child’s education too, helping them revise via the extensive video and assessment library at their fingertips. 

5. Finally, we’re comprehensively multi-platform, Taleemabad can be seen on TV, heard on the radio, experienced in schools and at home. This means that we reach north of 9M+ Pakistanis via our products. For students at large, this means learning is available everywhere. For school owners, this serves as a massive marketing boost, helping them scale the success of their schools by landing more admissions.

Currently, we serve 1,056,000 people through the Taleemabad Android and KaiOS Apps, with the vast majority on the Android App - the KaiOS app has just been launched and device uptake isn’t at critical mass as yet. In the next 12 months, we will onboard 500,000 - 1 million more users on the apps. In the next 5 years, we are targeting a total of 5 million people on the apps.

Through broadcast, we currently serve more than 8 million people (as stated by PEMRA, the country’s media regulatory authority). We are currently aired on 3 different channels however in the next year we are targeting 5 more channels to increase our broadcast audience to 13 million and in the next five years reach an audience of 20 million people.

We currently serve 4 schools with an average student strength of 250. In the next 12 months we are going to open 50 schools and in the next 5 years, 1000 schools in total.

The delivery of our solutions through digital means allows us to maintain a central data repository that enables us to track progress from our headquarters, even though our campuses are spread across the capital and our app users and broadcast audience are spread across the country. We monitor the following key metrics:

For Broadcast:

1. Number of viewers per day

For the Apps:

1. Number of Active Users

2. Average Screen Time

3. Number of visits per day

4. Number of videos watched

5. Number of assessments attempted - and the scores over time

For schools:

1. Number of schools opened

2. Number of children enrolled

3. Improvement in cognitive skills through assessments that assess different orders of thinking

4. Number of teachers trained

5. Number of lesson plans created

6. Number of books created and sold

125 total Employees 

61 are permanent - 29 are Female and 32 are Male

64 are contractual - 42 are Female and 22 are Male

The organization follows a Flat Matrix structure where we have specialised teams for; Tech Development (led by Nauman Bukhari who has a double degree in Economics and Maths); Content Development (led by Sabeena Abbasi, a Teach For Pakistan fellow with several years of teaching in and building communities that are underserved); Design (led by Zunaira Arshad who on Forbes 30 under 30 lists in 2020); Operations (led by Sarah Farooq who is a Fulbright Scholar and has 10 years of experience working with some of the top organisations in the development sector such as UN Women, UN Global Compact, Amal Academy and Generation: You Employed); Investor relations led by Daniyal Zia who has raised nearly $1 million in non-equity funding; Franchise growth led by Rashid Ali who has 15 years of establishing franchises; Pedagogy, Curriculum and Assessment Development (led by Haroon Yasin who found his first non-profit school right after high school and has since been awarded the Queen’s Young Leader Award, the Global Citizen Prize, is an Acumen Fellow, a WISE Learners Voice Fellow, a Rainer Arnhold Fellow and a Gulmakai Champion)

As a team, we have travelled the length and breadth of Pakistan, where we not only taught in public schools but also lived in these communities, participated in the harvest, attended community meetings and gone door to door to speak with parents about the problems in education to help us get a better understanding of the people we are designing these solutions for.

Technology doesn’t differentiate between people and we follow the same ethos. To achieve inclusion we have made it part of our recruitment policy and our charter documents, where we state that there will always be an equal ratio of genders; geography will not limit opportunities for people - we had a work from home policy long before it became the norm with the onset of the pandemic; a non-discrimination and anti-racism policy that ensures that our hiring is done on an objective basis.

1. We want to tap into the Solve community to help us raise our first round of financing. The VC ecosystem in Pakistan hasn’t matured and from the already limited pool of VCs, very few are comfortable supporting impact-driven organisations. We want the Solve community to help us raise these funds.

2. We want to expand our network into the Asia Pacific, MENA and African regions to explore opportunities to replicate the model in these contexts.

3. Provide us with a global platform to showcase our work to help us gain monetary and in-kind support

4. Help us transform our platforms into adaptive solutions that can cater to each child’ specific needs with less dependency on human capital

We want to create a sustainable ecosystem that currently just needs a jumpstart to help us get through this final stage of development. We are hoping that Solve can be this catalyst by providing us with a platform for increased visibility, which would help us get in touch with the right people to raise funds. We also need help in developing our tech offerings, particularly we need help in making our platforms adaptive.

1. VC funds

2. Agencies that can connect us to unrestricted donor capital

3. Developers to help us improve and expand our IT offering

4. Specialists in IT that can provide policy recommendations

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