QuestLyft

Cost of quality education is between $300 to $450 for day schools and $450 or more for boarding schools per term or $900 or more a year excluding other requirements. These numbers are out of reach to many parents and guardians in low-income countries, making it hard to send children to good schools, where quality education is accessible. 

QuestLyft leapfrogs capital-intensive infrastructural challenges encountered in delivering quality education by leveraging the internet to deliver curriculum-aware digital learning content. This is made possible by 98% 2G and 78% 3G internet coverage nationally and access to affordable smart devices. A $7 or less monthly subscription fee to premium content is attractive in comparison to existing.

Quality and Inclusive education play a key role in building the human capital required to achieve sustainable economic development of a country, improve the quality of people’s lives, hence reduce poverty.

Quality and Inclusive education play a key role in building the human capital required to achieve sustainable economic development of a country, improve the quality of people’s lives, hence reduce poverty. According to “Facing forward, schooling for learning in Africa” a world bank report. Achieving that future comes with challenges, some of the known challenges to quality and inclusive education are inadequate or shrinking resource allocation to education sector as documented in “BMAU BRIEFING PAPER (13/18) Published May 2018 by Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development of Uganda”, according to Global Partnership for Education on Uganda, these challenges include a high level of teacher and student absenteeism, weak school level management structures, inadequate availability of learning materials and large class sizes. 

Fact Sheet no. 56 September 2019 UIS/2019/ED/FS/56  reports that globally In 2018, 258.4M children, adolescents and youth were out of school, representing one-sixth of the global population of this age group of which 28.3M of lower secondary school age and 37M of upper secondary school age are from sub-Saharan Africa.

Alternative less expensive approach in learning could go a long way to drop the out-of-school numbers and contribute to building the knowledge capital necessary for development.

QuestLyft delivers curriculum-driven assessment tests, Instructor-led video lessons, and social tools that drive engagement and collaboration among learners and teachers. Learners can ask questions on any topic within the curriculum and get response from either fellow learners or teachers on the platform thus creating an engaging environment that keeps the learning community closer to each other and their learning objectives.

Instructor-led video content and assessment tests are grouped by class, subject, topic in line with a country’s curriculum, targeting secondary education.

The platform is currently only available on the Play store for android devices, android is the dominant platform in emerging markets. We will grow the platform to be accessible on the web targeting presence in school labs as well as Apple store.

The platform offers 7-day trial period for unlimited access to learning content for free, then transitions to paid plan, supporting daily and monthly pay plan. $ 0.28 for daily plan and $7 for monthly plan. Access to collaborative tools is free.

Currently working on a revenue-sharing model with content creators (The teacher) based on content consumption and referral program thus including the teaching community in the digital economy. 

In a globalized, knowledge-intensive economy where technological change is continually reshaping the labor markets, individuals with low levels of educational attainment and skills are increasingly penalized, Many children, students and adults from social-economically disadvantaged backgrounds fall behind, receiving too little support to succeed in school and in the labor market from “Educational Opportunity for All”, OECD report.

Nationally even as the economy has grown and poverty levels have fallen, income inequality in Uganda, as measured by the Gini coefficient, increased to 0.47 in 2014, indicating that the rich have grown richer while the poor have become poorer from “Who is growing? Ending inequality in Uganda” OXFAM report, implying the rich can afford to educate their children in good schools where quality education is guaranteed while the poor will settle for what they can afford irrespective of the learning outcome or deny their children a chance at education.

Our target audience nationally and later regionally constitutes a younger demographic population undergoing secondary education of age 13 - 19 years and as we grow we will include skill-based learning content to target an adult population of age 18 - 30 years exploring professional or vocational courses tailored to skills on-demand in the labor market. The solution will benefit youth and adults in these age groups who are from a social-economic disadvantaged background, some of whom in this group are dropouts willing to rejoin education or opt for self-paced learning. This platform gives them an opportunity to learn alongside privileged learners, making it easier to interact and learn from each other, gain access to quality prep and learning content as well as access to good teachers who are scarce in developing countries so as to level the playing field.

We are currently working with teachers to create lessons in science subjects, but intend to grow to include all curriculum supported subjects and engaging day schools in central Uganda as our first group of target learners to join the platform as we learn the challenges they encounter and work towards resolving the challenges to give them an optimum environment to learn. Use the model trained in the first roll-out phase and apply lessons learned into reaching out to other schools in other parts of the country.

Quality and Inclusive education plays a key role in building human capital required to achieve sustainable economic development of a country, improve the quality of people’s lives, hence reduce poverty. Digital inclusion in simplifying access to quality education at a fraction of the cost of the existing well-established institutions brings us closer to achieving inclusive education, the necessary ingredient of society progress. Our Solution leverages the existing telecom infrastructure to bring teachers, learners and parents on one digital platform to contribute to learning of the future human capital without the barriers of intensive capital.

We currently have 638 lessons on the platform covering geography, math, chemistry, biology, physics in ordinary and Advanced secondary level and 200+ lessons and growing not yet edited and uploaded on the platform. We have assessment content covering 4 subjects with multiple topics covered on the platform and more being processed to be added on the platform. We have presented the platform to two day schools in central Uganda. That is City High School and Luzira SS at their weekly assembly. At Luzira SS, after the presentation the learners formed groups and listed their names and parents contacts and the lists were shared with us by the lead teacher. We are being added to WhatsApp groups of learners and teachers. We have 2 paying learners and 100+ downloads and these numbers will improve in the next 2 month.

Currently Quality education is delivered by existing traditional and private institutions, that happen to be affordable to a few. Even in some of the existing traditional learning institutions quality education is not guaranteed because of a high level of teacher and student absenteeism, weak school level management structures, inadequate availability of learning materials and large class sizes as published by Global Partnership for Education on Uganda.

But the underlying cause of many of these issues in remote schools is capital allocation, teachers are not well paid, so not motivated to deliver results and for well-established schools, they are too expensive for parents to afford.

Our solution promises the teacher to be paid i.e. digital economy inclusion, the learner to access lessons at practically no cost in comparison to existing institutions, and a community guided by the mission to deliver quality education that is consistent with the curriculum guidelines thus giving learners who care to dream a chance at shooting for the stars irrespective of their background or which schools they attend.

Digital economy inclusion of teachers is a new concept in our part of the world, whose impact if well executed has the potential to disrupt the education marketplace and ignite a broader conversation on digital economy and its value to society.

As of this writing, we can’t be definite of how many are being served currently because our outreach program has just started, and it is also slowed down by COVID-19. That said, since May 2021, we have had 60+ accounts created and enrolled in 7-day trial program, 2 paying learners and 1000+ views of lessons. In the next 2 month we project to reach 500+ learner accounts created and a good number of paying learners. In the next one year we project to reach 2.5% or 160,000 learners of the estimated 6.4M people in the age group 13-19 as documented in “… Education in the Thematic Report Series, Kampala, Uganda.”. in the next 2 to 3 years we project to reach 13.5% (864,000) of the 6.4M people in the same age group. 3 to 5 years, we would have reached significant momentum leading us to 34% (2.2M) learners accessing the platform in Uganda alone. Internet is borderless, its hard to quantify its reach and impact as of now beyond Uganda.

QuestLyft is a data-driven platform, all measurable metrics will be collected from within the platform. Statistical models will be applied to the collected data and generate insight in the performance of the project against expected outcomes.

These are the critical parts to track to measure progress of the project.

 Rate of account creation, 7-day trial enrollment and turn into paying learner.

Measure learner performance on the platform through our assessment test package and compare it to the performance in national exams

Rate of learning content growth measured by how much content is covered and how far we are from the intended health metric in coverage.

Measure our outreach program against its intended objective of referral teacher enrollment, learner enrollment and contributing teachers enrollment.

Measure performance of teachers in the referral program by tracking how many learners enroll with their referral.

6 full-time staff, 8 contractors (Teachers or Content Creators)

The teaching staff have 5+ years’ experience in teaching and interacting with learners in both day and boarding schools, they know exactly what it takes to pass exams and how to deliver that so that learners can benefit. They understand why learners in other less privileged schools are not able to succeed and constantly advise on what we should do to have an impact.

The technical team, we have 9+ years developing and maintaining solutions for United Nations, ThoughtWorks, UNICEF. We are well placed to handle technical issues to ensure the platform availability and reliability.

The Financial Team, Our Financial manager has 6+ years’ experience managing mid-level institution finances i.e. as Financial manager for a hotel, As Accounts manager for an Insurance brokerage company.

The administrative and Marketing team, it is composed of committed staff to the mission and learn on the way how to get things done correctly. 

We are a young company currently having 1 Kenyan female as head of the financial team, and 1 other Kenyan male on standby to head the Technical team. We value diversity and gender inclusion, our mission is get it done with the team willing to work hard to get it done irrespective of there gender, race or beliefs. As we grow, we will have a policy that addresses diversity and inclusion and will be applied across the company. 

Gain exposure to a network of like-minded people committed to solving challenges we face today in order to make the world a better place to live in for everybody. The solutions developed are normally capital intensive and require partnerships with institutions that align with the mission and willing to contribute to the growth of the mission through linkages, human capital, and other aspects that contribute to the growth of the mission.

We are a lean team, currently working multiple tasks to keep the project alive, it is exhausting and sometimes un-intended mistakes are made and correction follows. If we grow our talent pool in areas critical to the running of the solution example content quality assurance, videography, thoughtfulness in how to deliver learning material for impact, strategic outreach planning, public relationships, and partnerships with other institutions with a similar mission. establishing these structures is capital intensive but very critical to our long-term survival.

Partnering with MIT to deliver quality education in my part of the world would mean a lot to me and the team and the message will descend that it is happening, MIT the birthplace of personalities that have made great inventions that have transformed the world, yes that MIT.

Am not sure if we qualify since the program seems tailored to USA. but saying NO has long-term implications of not being considered just in case our solution is fit for funding. That said, Our solution is tailored to making quality secondary education accessible to all who dare to shoot for the stars, irrespective of their background, privileged or unprivileged. it also directly involves teachers in the digital economy and the digital world, something that looked impossible when we started out but now seems feasible and they are growing into it, as we grow more will join and the message will descend that going digital contributes value to society and breaks barriers faster and effectively. We started out with sciences (STEM) because it is considered so hard that people shy away from it, we want to make it look so simple to have more learners join in. As the platform grows, we will diversify to include skill-based learning thus providing a pathway to careers of choice to learners.

Yes we qualify. Our solution is a data-driven platform, with the generated data of what learners are interested in, their performance in assessment tests, we can use machine learning to tailor content to learners' interests or improve assessment tests to ensure the best outcomes for learners. as the question and answer content begins to grow, so will the need for machine learning grow, gathering insights on what questions standout and which contributors stand out and use those insights to innovate on how to reward best performers and how to keep the learning community more engaged and exposed to opportunities in their line of interest. Artificial intelligence when implemented in our platform can help in impact assessment, which regions are benefitting the most and which ones are not and how do we deploy resources to ensure no region is left behind. 

Yes we qualify. Our solution is a data-driven platform, with the generated data of what learners are interested in, their performance in assessment tests, we can use machine learning to tailor content to learners' interests or improve assessment tests to ensure the best outcomes for learners. as the question and answer content begins to grow, so will the need for machine learning grow, gathering insights on what questions standout and which contributors stand out and use those insights to innovate on how to reward best performers and how to keep the learning community more engaged and exposed to opportunities in their line of interest. Artificial intelligence when implemented in our platform can help in impact assessment, which regions are benefitting the most and which ones are not and how do we deploy resources to ensure no region is left behind. 

Our solution is built to deliver quality secondary education to all that dare to shoot for the stars irrespective of their background, privileged or unprivileged thus leveling the playing field to build a better society. We achieve this mission by including teachers in the digital economy, in which they benefit from their efforts and making it easier to reach a wider learning audience through the teacher networks. We will use these resources to expand our teacher network, train them on how to get involved and how they benefit, and also avail them with resources to make more teachers digitally literate and contribute to the platform thus making the platform a healthy teacher-learner-centric platform.