Learn Education

Learn Education is a social enterprise with the mission to innovate learning platforms by leveraging technology to provide quality education. Over 2 million students in Thailand do not receive education, and more than  1.8 million students are underprivileged. Challenged by the low quality education, ranking at the bottom of equity in education resource allocation (PISA 2018) and the lack of 66,000 quality and quantity teachers, especially in Science and Math. We have developed the first learning platform in Thailand that integrates technology into the curriculum for Math and Science. The system creates one-on-one learning situations between the student and the coursework and helps to combat the extremely high student to teacher ratio (45-60:1). Til now, we have served over 300 schools, 100,000 students, decreased 50% dropout rate (for hill tribe schools), and 30% increase in academic performance. We have supported many underprivileged schools and students in low income neighborhood.

The education of Thailand has faced many challenges. Over 2 million children are not in the education system (28% of all children) and about 1.8 million students (aged 6-14 years old) in the education system are underprivileged (https://isee.eef.or.th/national3/index.html, ISEE, 2019). Moreover, showing from the PISA scores (PISA 2018), Thai student scores are ranking at the bottom for all Math, Science and Reading which reflects severe poor quality in Thailand’s education system, and that also leads to other societal problems. Despite massive attention by the government, education quality still has not improved, as indicated by the low average score on the national examinations in recent years. In addition, the inadequacy of quality teachers is also one of the major problems. This causes the tremendously high student-teacher ratio, and there are a large number of teachers teaching subjects which they are not qualified. In addition, Thailand was ranked among the lowest of the participated countries in the equity in educational resources (PISA 2018).

Our blended learning platform is targeted to school teachers with aims to elevate students’ motivation in learning and ability to apply Math and Science to their daily lives. We also aim to develop students’ logical, critical thinking and reasoning which are fundamental aspects to lead better lives. Here is the 3 main components.

1. The core teaching content is designed to capture Thailand’s basic education requirements, upon which we consistently induce ethical thinking and introduce the academic content in a fun and interactive way from experienced and high quality teachers. It is produced both in video files and aligning textbooks. 

2. Learning software is designed to be a 1:1 learning platform, where students can personalize the speed of the content to fit their needs. The software also comes with post-evaluation tests, and teachers can keep track of students’ progress.

3. Implementation services involve understanding schools’ teachers and directors for us to adapt our product to fit their needs.

Since the COVID-19, we have improved our platform to be more complete for virtual learning system. The platform can be used anytime and anywhere with personal live coach and 24 hour clear services to answer questions from students.

Our online blended learning platform serves school teachers with the purpose to improve students’ (beneficiaries) academic outcomes and close the gap in accessibility of quality education. We work with both private and public schools. It has been our passionate mission to help underprivileged schools and students who live in rural and poor communities with lacking quality education and resources. 

Before scaling our solution, we pilot tested our product with a school diligently for over 2 years. Our solution has proven to increase students’ motivation and engagement in learning in the first pilot school resulting in higher academic performance by 30% (measured by ONET national examination score). To consistently improve our quality, we use online surveys (at the end of each learning module), in-depth individual interviews and focus groups to understand our teachers and students in order to develop our implementation process. Every year, we have an annual seminar to get teachers together to share their experiences and feedbacks.  We work closely with schools to customize our solutions to serve all school appropriately. We believe that building a community learning and a good relationship for teachers is a key to our successful implementation. 

Students's scores increased over 30%.

Learn Education helps to elevate opportunities for all people, especially those who are traditionally left behind. Until now, we have served over 300 schools and 100,000 students. With our solution, we have helped to decrease up to 50% drop out rate (for hill tribe schools) and 30% increase in academic performance in our user schools. We have supported many underprivileged schools and students in low income neighborhood that the family earn less than $ 5 PPP per day so they can have a quality education and have better opportunities in the future.

Our classroom on a hill.

Our solution's stage of developing is growth. We have been working in this business for about 10 years now, and we have served over 300 schools and 100,000 students. However, there are over 30,000 schools and 1,800,000 underprivileged students in Thailand. We are looking for growth to reach about 1,000,000 student users within 3 years. We believe that this is the critical mass, and we will be able to see the strong impact. There are still many schools that lacks of quality teachers and appropriate infrastructure such as internet and computers especially in the remote areas, and that make it challenge for us to grow.

With Learn Education’s holistic approach to students learning and teachers’ development which has proven to yield success in enhancing students’ academic achievement coupled with being the first mover that truly understands and with in-depth experience education technology, we believe that our work is innovative and unique in the following areas: 

1. First innovative 1-on-1 technology blended leaning platform with affordable cost for schools which will improve students to be critical thinkers, and able to apply Math & Science to their daily lives. 

2. High efficient business in term of the economy of scale. The values of cost per student tends to decrease every year due to the increase of customers and the lower cost per head. 

3. The expertise in IT System for content delivery which easily scale to many schools at a time. The teacher royalty program, recognition award and training process which proves to be our key success to build strong customer relationships as well as solving Thai educational problem at its root cause. 

5. Our learning platform which will gradually shape students to become active learners, and self-learners. These skills are not easy to develop in the ordinary classroom in Thailand, showing the efficiency of our solution not only hard skills but also soft skills development. 

6. The knowledge and know-how of implementation process which will allow our product to integrate into the existing school environment by using technology coupled with our teacher training to help teachers better execute their teachings. 

We are currently serving 100,000 students, and in 1 year we expect to serve about 150,000 students. By the end of the next 5 years we aim to serve at least 1,000,000 students which expected that 50% of them are underserved students. We also strongly believe that we have a potential to penetrate other ASEAN countries by leveraging our current platform technology and partnering with local companies whose interests align with ours in the next 5 years.

We plan to measure success by our product enhancing the understanding of the subject content, greater relate to real life and foster critical thinking, resulting in an increase in student motivation & engagement in learning. These are key drivers for academic success (measured by O-NET, national exam), which motivates students to continue their education and have more opportunities attending better high schools and career pursuits—resulting in higher income and job security. Long term, we will elevate the quality of rural schools decrease the education inequality gap and decrease the student dropout rate and prevent societal issues occurred once out of the education system. We closely monitor teachers and students through our technological data tracking system as well as our frequent engagement with our teachers. Our computer-based software tracks students’ performances and gives statistical analysis to help teachers understand students’ level of understanding and their performances. For teachers, we organize quarterly meetings with the team as well as conducting interviews to understand teachers’ needs and how to best improve our technology. We also have exchanges between teachers in the Learn Education network through our yearly teacher conference. We work closely with school principals to provide the support required responding to the diverse backgrounds and levels of student engagement as well as their academic performance and collect all the useful data such as O-NET score and dropout rate, annually. 

Our team consists of 100 people. There are 80 full-time staff and 20 part-time staff.

Our management team consists of entrepreneurs and educators socially-minded and with practical experience in business. Learn Education has three co-founders with expertise in education and all have worked in the business sector. One of the co-founders has over 10 years of experienced teaching middle and high school science and had great success in developing a computer based self-learning system that is well-recognized in Thailand. The team is also comprised of new generation talent from education,  engineering, and business backgrounds. Our teachers have at least 5 years of teaching experience. One of our board of advisors, Dr. Chainarong Monthienvichienchai, Chancellor of St. John’s University Bangkok and Director of St. John thabom school, graduated with doctoral degree in education management from London. He was in the education field for more than 30 years. Now he is a Director of many educational institutions with extensive expertise in innovative learning pedagogies. 

To deliver the project, it is required to collaborate and communicate with many organizations or groups of people in various fields including school administrators, teachers, students, parents, government officers, educators, and technology developers. Education is a long term investment.

My team and I have been working in the field of education technology for over 10 years, and we have built partnerships with many organizations in various areas. We have experiences working with teachers and students all over Thailand and have learned what the pain points of our users are. We know how to support and fix their problems.

We do not hire people based on their gender, religious, family background, but we focus on their passion to provide quality education and reduce the education inequality gap. Our team consists of 60% female and 40% male members that are from all over Thailand. We value how different every one of us is, and appreciate variety. We try to create a community in which everyone feels recognized and included.

One of the most important barriers that Solve can help us overcome is building connection with government and partners. If we win the prize, our company will have more reputation and credibility and that will make it easier for us to get support from our government and partners. We have a plan to collaborate with the government to leverage digital learning platform to help teachers to provide quality education and that will help us for scaling into public schools which controlled under the government. The fund also will be used to develop the solution to better increase student’s motivation, engagement, and skills such as critical thinking & collaboration skills. We will continue to develop our learning platform to best fit students at different levels and different backgrounds. 

Since MIT is best known for its program in engineering, sciences and technology, it would be the most meaningful for us to be recognized by the world’s top university. It would help to increase the reputation and trustworthy of our learning solution and that would open up more opportunities for us to scale and support more students to have better education in the future.

We would like to partner with MIT Media Lab and MIT online courses. I aim to bring valuable resources of knowledge and innovation from the well known institute to support  the learning system for students in the South East Asia.