CAKAP Goes To School (CGTS)

Our initiative enables two-ways English group class between qualified teachers and students at schools in underserved and remote area.

CGTS initiative aims to solve 3 problems:

1. Uneven distribution of quality education in Indonesia
2. Low engagement of one-way, video based online learning  
3. Ineffective online learning delivery due to curriculum not optimized for online learning and teachers not used to teach with online tools

The initiative will attempt to solve the problems through:

1. Optimized materials for online learning as well as qualified teachers experienced in teaching online
2. Two-way online class that emphasizes on interactivity and project-based curriculum that is adapted from CEFR or school curriculum
3. Learning dashboard (LMS) for teacher to log in class and individual reports as well as track the learning growth of students

We use our own propriety video conferencing technology as well as well-known platform such as zoom to deliver the class. The class itself will be up to 25 students for optimal learning and can be integrated into an intra- or extracurricular of the school. We mainly focuses on middle and high school as the main target, though we are not oppose to include primary if opportunity arises.

By going directly to partner with schools, we aim to introduce and increase students' interest in English early as we believe that having mastery of English has been increasingly essential skill to have in 21st century for upward social mobility when these students entering the job market.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, online learning has became the only main method of learning delivery for students in Indonesia. This sped up digital adoption of education which offers great potential to even out access to quality education for students in remote areas.

However as Covid-19 began to recede, there is a growing push to return back to full offline class. According to interview, survey, evaluation on the full year online learning by Kemendikbud (MOE), few challenges arisen during the period.

Among them, which will be the first problems that we are aiming to solve, were low engagement during the online learning because of ineffective online learning delivery due to curriculum not optimized for online learning and teachers not used to teach with online tools.

For example, according to Plt Pusdatin Kemendikbud, Muhammad Hasan Chabibie, 87% teachers only used online learning as a method to deliver and collect assignments.

The second problems will be the fact that starting from 2013, English has been discontinued as a mandatory lesson at primary level hence we often find out low level command of English amongst students. Anecdotally we even have often been approach to teach local teachers English as their level of mastery on the subject were not good enough.

Our main target market for this initiative will be the 20 million middle and high school students, along with another 20.5 million of primary students as secondary target.

Though this initiative at first will work with schools and students in all area to increase credibility and brand awareness, our main target will be those students and schools outside Java especially at the westernmost and easternmost Indonesia such as Aceh, Riau and Papua.

We work closely with foundations, partners, local governments and schools to understand their needs as we develop the initiative to be more engaging, suitable and relevant for students.

For example, we are optimizing our this initiative so it will be accessible through mobile phone. We are also developing a project-based curriculum to increase engagement and develop more on practical skills such as communication.

Another thing that we do is we constantly looking and engaging with telco partners to drive down the cost of internet through partnership such as bundling for our students.

The solution to Increase equitable access to quality learning opportunities for underserved learners in low connectivity environments is often through one-way, video-based learning method.

We find that this method though efficient is not entirely beneficial to the students. According to research by World bank, having teacher presence increases test scores.

CAKAP Goes to School (CGTS) initiative aims to provide a two-way learning with optimized and engaging materials that is specifically design for online learning for students. The teachers that we provide was all qualified and has been given and trained in delivering lessons online.

In the long term, we believe this initiative can solve current uneven distribution of quality education in Indonesia.

The team lead will be Siti Messyana Putri as the solution lead of CAKAP Goes To School (CGTS).

Our initiative aims to provide free or heavily subsidized live, two-way interaction class to student at schools in underserved community while remaining financially sustainable.

We launched the initiative in August 2021, so far we have onboarded few schools to test our initiative, gather feedback and improve on our offerings.

As of September 25th, the feedback from schools and students have been quiet positive though we are still continuing refining our offerings.

The key technology will be a reliable video-conferencing tech as the foundation of the live classes.

We use our own video-conferencing platform, zoom or GMeet depending on requirements.

The immediate outputs from our initiative is to be the stepping stone for these students to know more about English and hopefully gain interest in finding out more about other cultures.

The short term outcomes is to provide our students with a practical skills such as communication which will be essential to have in 21st century.

The longer term outcomes is for them to have a mastery of not only English but also skills from literature and media that is in English hence becoming a well-rounded workforce with important 21st century skills which will be important for their careers and increases the chances of upward social mobility.

We will measure the progress and successes of the program through following metrics:

1. Learning growth: Comparing pre-test and post-test scores

2. Engagement: Attendance, assignment and project completed

3. Satisfaction: Survey on class, teachers and program satisfaction

4. Impact: Survey on how the program help them learn new things, increases interests in other cultures, attain scholarship/jobs after 6 months the program ended

In the next year, we aim that we will have work with 100 schools giving lessons to 2,500+ students.

The goals is to have majority of our graduate stating that the program helps them in getting job, school grants, further their educations or shape their future aspirations and careers.

1. Technology

Internet penetration rate although has becoming widespread to all areas in Indonesia and cheaper is still of low quality thus even though students have access to internet, it stills very slow.

To solve this, we are committed to partnering with telco and institutions to help spread fast data plan along with this initiative (e.g. bundle free data plan for CGTS students)

2. Cultural

Indonesia is historically reluctant to spend on education as most still focus on natural resources development rather than improving digital and 21st century skills.

To solve this, we partner directly with schools as an entry point and give them free group class to give them a demo of fun, engaging English learning as well as reminding them the economic benefits of learning English

3. Access to talent

We have found that the teachers in Indonesia especially outside first tiers cities have not enough mastery of English and digital literacy thus we need also develop the teachers to expand this initiative

To solve this, Cakap have started an initiative (Cakap Teacher Academy) to increase English and digital competency of teachers by giving 6-weeks bootcamp lessons, in which those with high aptitude for teaching English will get hired by us

Cakap is the largest EdTech startup in Indonesia in language and upskill vertical. We are founded in 2016 and was the pioneer in utilizing two-way learning interaction as a learning delivery in Indonesia.

Our vision is to elevate people's lives through skill enhancement anywhere, anytime thus CGTS initiative is one of our efforts to make our vision comes true.

We believe that this initiative can be a real learning solution in the long-term especially at underserved communities and remote area.

4 people from Education, Business Development and Partnership team. All is full-time employee at Cakap.

Our team is a combination of multidiscipline experienced professional in business and academic.

We also came from different background experience such as public teachers, NGO professionals and business professionals.

Our combined experience allowed us to see from multiple perspective i.e. schools, students and teachers to create an initiative that is fit with our target's needs and reach the targeted impact while still keeping the initiative's long term feasibility solid.

With more than eight years of leadership experience in various industries including governmental project, it has led her to attain the chance of handling the Lombok Reconstruction Project in 2018, where she worked closely with the community members and the victims to resolve the complications caused by the earthquake. And together with the Indonesian government rebuilt the destroyed houses, schools, and infrastructures in Lombok. It has proven her as an agile creative problem solver.

We are currently partner with:

1. School partner

We are working with our school partner by providing free English group class and gathering data such as student engagement, learning delivery to improve our product and solution

2. Corporate CSR and NGO

We are working with corporate CSR and NGO to expand our school network and reach as well as funding

We believe that this challenge is aligned with our firm's vision and the objective of our solution.

We hope that by partnering with Octava and MIT Solve will get the help primarily in form of access to network of experienced resource partners and mentors as well as a peer-to-peer network to understand and learn from their experience and what is the best practices from more experienced stakeholders

We mainly needs 3 elements in achieving our goals:

1. Access to resources partners, mentors and experienced social entrepreneur

2. Human capital and technological support - how to scale up operations and grow the teams

3. Public relations - how to gain mind share and credibility for our solution efficiently