Digital pre-school for immersive learning and collaboration

COVID-19 has shifted and accelerated the need for digitized, sustainable and quality education across the world. 

Children face the issue of slowed access to quality education, disrupted learning because of protracted lockdowns and school closures. Many schools, educators and parents were not ready for home based training, especially in many developing nations which were struggling to keep up with the rate of adjustment and onboarding onto digitised learning due to a lack of resources and under-equipped teachers/schools and lack of quality educators and educational content.

Consistent access to pre-school education

In India, while the Right to Education Act has reduced the number of Out-of-School Children (OOSC) aged 6 to 14 years, from 13.46 million in 2006 to six million in 2014 (Source: RI-IMRB Surveys, 2009 and 2014), an estimated six million primary-age children are still out of school. Of these, a majority are from marginalised communities including Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and religious minority groups. These inequalities are worse when we consider quality early childhood education: In India, there are approximately 20 million children, between the ages of 3-6, that are not attending preschool. This is primarily because of lack of basic infrastructure, qualified early childhood educators and appropriate learning materials.

Lack of equality of access to quality education

Once in school, children may still not be learning at grade-appropriate levels. At primary level, poor quality teaching and learning practices result in lower school attendance and children drop out due to early marriage, child labour or because they are subject to violence or abuse. Seasonal migration, poverty, lack of access to and awareness of social protection measures also lead to children dropping out of school. In the preschool sector, low school readiness levels in cognitive and language skills prevail for children in government-run Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) as well as the private preschools. (Source: Longitudinal study, Center for Early Childhood Education and Development, Ambedkar University, ASER Centre).

These issues with the quality at the early-childhood level lead to larger issues in the future. Large scale learning assessments and surveys have consistently pointed to the poor learning levels of children even after eight years of elementary education due to the absence of strong foundation provided by quality early childhood education.

Two aspects of quality education also reinforce existing socioeconomic disparities. The first is the lack of appropriate models for parental engagement: Research has found that parents play a critical role in providing a learning bridge between school and the home, while instilling in their children positive attitudes and values towards learning and life. In many parental engagement models are not crafted to take into account social class differences over material and cultural conditions and dispositions towards education (De Carvalho, 2014). Social groups in reality are more complex and diverse, and teachers and school officials with little information or training on how to deal with diverse parents may struggle to cope (LaRocque, Kleiman & Darling, 2011). Further, less engaged parents tend to come from lower economic backgrounds, migrant and minority groups and are single parents, who lack time or the knowledge or confidence about how to be appropriately involved (Hill & Tyson, 2009). Parents’ own negative experiences as students may also influence their attitudes towards their children’s academic learning and their teachers (Grolnick et al., 2009).

Another aspect is the digital divide in educational technology: while global education institutions are exploring ways for virtual engagement and lessons, this mechanism appears to be largely adopted in urban areas and limited to institutions catering to more affluent sections of society.

Our solution is three-pronged. 

We aim to target the inequality of access of quality education through the provision of 2 digital solutions - the creation of a mobile app and a digital preschool for immersive and collaborative learning and engagement between stakeholders in the educational ecosystem- parent, teacher and child:

1. Development and Open-source access to quality educational curriculum via partnership with educators, early-childhood experts and schools - focus on providing quality pre-school education that is high quality, relevant and future-ready. We will be creating an open-source access to one of the best English literacy curriculums in the world based on Singapore's education system (consistently one of the highest PISA scorers globally) that has been backed by research and aligned to the highest global standards. This will be hosted on our mobile app on a freemium basis where people who are able to afford the subscription fees can pay while those who are unable to can download and access the content for free for offline and online access.  

2. Personalized learning journeys for different learning profiles via Science of Learning and Holistic Child Approach - The education system is based on rote-testing system and a subjective assessment of pre-school children's learning which are not adequate to meet the learning gaps and diverse learning profiles of children. 

We will be partnering with educational and neurobiological scientists to align the data point collection in the mobile app to consolidate the learning patterns of different learners to create learning profiles to personalize learning journeys to different needs. 

By collecting data on the learning patterns on the app, we are also better able to tailor the program and deliver the content in a way that best fits their needs. We believe no child is stupid, and we will be able to prove the beauty of diversity in learning needs with this app and optimise learning outcomes for every child. 

The data collection will also be able to help diagnose dyslexia and other diverse learning patterns earlier on in the learning journey to help shape the content to be more diverse and inclusive to children of different needs. 

Research has also shown that low engagement can be overcome by encouraging interactions and exposure to help increase their knowledge and hence, effectiveness of involvement at home (Hill & Tyson, 2009). As part of the child’s lessons on the platform, parents will have simple tasks to complete with the child. They will also be able to track their child’s learning progress and be given pointers on what they can work on with their child. Further, the platform is built for interactivity, so that parents are able to respond directly to their child’s work and encourage them, even if they are physically separated. This helps the parent who is based overseas to stay intentionally connected to their child and foster the relationship. This is part of the Holistic Child Approach for learning, where parental involvement are integral for a child's learning success. 

3. Building a digital pre-school

We are building a digital solution on the metaverse as a safe space for children and teachers to interact and engage with lesson content while not losing the interactivity of real-life stimulation and immersion. This is a classroom without walls that will extend its access to children with internet access. This is pending the internet infrastructure that is accessible to children and families in their respective countries, but we are looking to revolutionise learning by pioneering a digital pre-school and to be a digital solution provider for pre-schools everywhere by enabling, empowering and executing the digital transition more smoothly and to optimise learning outcomes and reduce burnout of the educators with the lack of resources/manpower and provide this avenue as a digital supplement that is aligned to the curriculum. This has no dependencies on manpower, but rather it is powered by technology to help equip, support and strengthen educational delivery for teachers, guardians and parents. 

SHINE will have a large impact on families with parents who have been separated from their children (i.e. migrant parents who have left their homes to work overseas, war-torn separation of parent and child etc).

Our aim is simple. We believe that no child should be deprived of quality education no matter their circumstance. We want to ensure quality, grade-appropriate education from early childhood through primary school for all boys and girls through the digitization of classrooms by allowing for online-based learning in this pilot project for effective coordination, implementation and monitoring of future education programmes in rural parts of India and other developing nations. 

We aim to reduce the number of out-of-school children due to geographical restrictions and immobility by 10 million over 5 years through timely enrolment, regular attendance and flexible learning for elementary and secondary aged children.

By working closely with education and early childhood experts, we want to make sure children left behind from labour migration are able to participate in quality early childhood and elementary education with learning outcomes at grade appropriate levels while having proper interactivity and engagement with their parents via technology. 

We are currently working with a locally-based employers of migrant workers in Singapore and we are in talks to roll out the pilot mobile app with the employers for their employees (i.e. migrant workers in oil, gas, construction, manufacturing and processes industries etc)

Our discussions have involved the needs and concerns of the migrant parents for their children and we have adapted and integrated features in the app purposefully and intentionally to meet the interactivity and engagement needs that have surfaced in our conversations.

We are looking to solidify a close partnership with the major companies employing migrant workers in Asia to enable the dissemination and uptake of our digital solution in a directed and focused manner. 

We are looking to gain momentum in our publicity and communications for this digital solution. We would like to be connected to partners and teams doing similar work in this space and to build an ecosystem of solution providers to alleviate the inequalities caused by educational access.

We would like to build a community of like-minded teams who are passionate and eager to focus and direct their talents and skills to help work toward a holistic, comprehensive and in-depth solution to improve access of education for children and nations everywhere, regardless of socio-economic access and circumstance. 

We would also like to meet other partners who are in the tech space to help maximise, improve and provide thought leadership and counsel to help make educational solutions more future-ready, relevant and sustainable.