ShortKode

ShortKode trains teachers and connects these teachers to schools looking to hire them.

ShortKode is a Laravel website that stores information of our users (teacher job applicants), allowing schools to access a detailed large directory of teachers ranked by ShortKode and vice versa for schools. Teachers are able to directly contact school managements, save their applications directly to the school's "jobs applications" folder on ShortKode's website. Schools are able to get the best teachers as ShortKode employs vetting tests which last a few minutes and cover comprehensive international curriculum expectations, schools and teachers are able to narrow down preferences, teachers are able to train/accredit themselves using ShortKode's video courses on its website and/or pay for in center teacher training with ShortKode's network of accreditation centers. ShortKode also uses the profiles created by schools on it's website to allow these schools run online adverts automated with little human interaction at 50% cheaper advert rates and higher targeting accuracy. This allows schools to pay for marketing campaigns with a few clicks and increase student count without much time investment, allowing school admins to focus on improving student learning outcomes. 

Globally, 773 million (Adults) people are illiterate. 56% of all children globally won't be able to attain basic numeracy and literacy levels by primary education age with 443 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa & Southeast Asia not achieving minimum proficiency levels by lower secondary school age. These children when older lack the capacity for job skills training not even considering real employment. These are caused by ineffective teacher recruitment methods, under trained teachers and poor tracking of learning outcomes by country. For context, Nigeria (Our current operating market) produces 600,000+ graduates annually with these people sent into an unemployed 23 million workforce. About 50% of Nigeria's 1.5 million teachers are untrained/undertrained coupled with poor emphasis on student basic skills like literacy and numeracy, with recent studies finding 61% of students in class not understanding what is taught thus making 49% of teachers ineffective. 

Schools sourced quality teachers either through teacher consultants which charge $70/₦29,260 on average and take 2 months to deliver, or these schools just accept teachers who come for jobs and submit CVs at the school's resident premises, most of which are not trained. For school marketing, due to inflation and most recently Covid-19, K12 schools have resulted in spending $220+/₦91,960 on outside banners, posters, flyers which equals multiples of the salaries of teachers under the school's payroll. Schools decry lack of access to a diverse pool of teachers as their scope of reach (usually their neighborhood and maybe town) is too small to really get the best teachers, also considering competition from other schools. Teachers who need help to find school jobs and get hired by schools have to pass through bulky training sessions which take money and time, travel long distances to submit their CVs to as many schools as possible.

With ShortKode schools pay $0 instead of $70+ on teacher recruitment which often fall short of expectations. With us teachers, aspiring teachers, unemployed adults get a chance at a good job as these people can get trained for free and accredited 50% below industry costs and directly contact employers anywhere they are, allowing them to prepare for the teaching jobs before getting the teaching jobs.

We have 500 primary & secondary school contacts and plan to expand to 2,000 schools.

We have surveyed more than 216 schools and tested our product mockups, MVPs with more than 120 teachers, all through December 2020 to November 2021, using the MIT exploration grant we were able to test out our hypothesis with primary & secondary schools in person, we found out that similar to our earlier online findings, schools wanted access to quality teachers, more clients (parents), cheaper teacher training courses/programs for their current staff and consistent payments from parents as at when the bill was due. This involved surveying locations like Gwarinpa, Dutse and Kubwa in Abuja, teacher survey research online involved teachers from different Nigerian states at random to be able to notice a pattern. We tested out different business models, ways of providing value to teachers and schools till we were able to find common ground. It turned out that teachers and schools were weary of traditional recruitment and school advertisement methods, they wanted cheaper, more effective, faster straight to the point services which did not require continuous indulgence to work.

Currently we use a website built on Laravel to store information of our users (teacher job applicants) allowing schools to access a detailed large directory of teachers ranked by ShortKode and vice versa for schools. Teachers are able to directly contact the school management board of the schools they choose to send their applications directly to on ShortKode’s website. Schools are able to get the best teachers as ShortKode employs vetting tests structured to only take a few minutes when answered by teachers, these tests cover major curriculums in Nigeria though we are yet to run them with pilots on a large scale. Within the website, schools and teachers are able to set preferences like age, location, subject taught, qualification rank, soft skills etc. ShortKode’s website in the near future aims to introduce marketing features and teacher accreditation videos where schools can pay for online adverts within minutes and get results (currently working on it) and adults can receive training to become teachers on the website or even through partner accreditation centers recommended by ShortKode.

ShortKode uses a website, mobile phone calls and SMS to make sourcing schools to apply to and teachers to vet more easier for schools and teachers/aspiring teachers. Using imbedded GPS technology from the mobile phones of the users to help the users (teachers/aspiring teachers) and school admins to locate each other and contact each other in real time.

We have access to 500 primary & secondary school contacts for immediate sales, we plan to serve up to 2,000 primary & secondary schools located in Abuja, Lagos, Kaduna, Ogun states in the next 12 months, totaling 12,000 classes, 360,000 students enabling 6,000 teachers (aspiring teachers, graduates, unemployed adults) to secure stable teaching jobs.

On our current budget, we’re looking to connect at least 50 to 100 new teachers to jobs, help up to 500 schools in at least one Nigerian state (Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Ogun, Kaduna) better stock new teachers for when next they will do interviews for their next hires and record and up to 10% literacy and numeracy gains for students taught by our recommended teachers. We plan to use word of mouth, organic referrals, paid agent referrals, adverts, to drive awareness for our offering, improve our pre vetting standards and run marketing adverts aimed at parents for schools (This strategy also draws more schools into our network as they look to increase student count). We also seek to partner with community focused NGOs that provide food, amenities to communities and schools who have a good relationship with schools in rural areas that we will want to reach.

We measure/plan to measure number of teachers registered on the platform, No_ of teachers active on the platform monthly, No_ of teachers trained on platform, No_ of teachers trained through partner accreditation centers, No_ of students reporting high numeracy & literacy rates/scores due to classes taught by teachers employed from ShortKode. Measurable Indicators include: SDG goals 4.1.1 (percentage of basic skills attainment rate for students per 10 to 100 classes in primary and lower secondary schools per quarter), 4.c.1 (No_ of in-service teachers using ShortKode's free & paid hybrid platform courses to improve their effectiveness, qualifications & success rate per month) and 8.6.1 (percentage of unemployed graduates per state operating in using ShortKode to improve literacy skills or seek employment per month).

Capital requirements (We will need a certain amount of funding to create teacher accreditation courses and run pilots for new partnerships i.e. with NGOs, Cerebry), Lack of adequate mentorship (we anticipate we would need support  – partnership support for teacher accreditation, we also anticipate the need to partner with recognized teacher accreditation & international curriculum experts to help add more value to ShortKode’s offerings).

We have more than 25 years experience teaching children in primary & secondary schools located in rural & urban areas, we’ve worked at key educational institutions (ASSOTECH, CGAM, Nasarawa state Polytechnic, African Innovation Week), schools, with advisors and partners from NGOs, Incubators & Accelerators, researchers  and students to be able to double down on our target market. During our time working in schools, interviewing schools, private tutoring students, we have been able to understand what drives school owners, motivations of youths to pursue teaching jobs and what parents look for when choosing schools for their children. I do seek input from the teachers, web developer & data scientist on my team, their decades of insight into the education industry helped stir ShortKode through different value propositions as we pivoted repeatedly in the past year (2020-2021)

We got in partnership talks with:

• Cerebry (Allows ShortKode’s in-service teachers or teachers recruited/not recruited from ShortKode by schools to be able to teach math more effectively without needing to be present in person always).
• MHEI (Allows ShortKode access to its network of K12 schools familiar with it’s programs).
• Global Trade Consult (Gives ShortKode access to K12 schools using international curriculums in Ghana to source better teachers).
• Heritage Charity Foundation (Giving ShortKode a voice by being our advocate for the SDG goals towards improving the literacy of children and adults coupled with job creation).