UNISCHOOL MOBILE APPLICATION

Unischool provides equitable access to higher education careers  opportunities and sponsorship opportunities to learners, career-guidance teachers and secondary schools through its career guidance application that works both offline and online. 

Every year millions of students graduate from high school and are faced with one of the toughest decision in life, to choose a career pathway through which all their financial future, hopes, dreams and aspirations will rest. But what does an 18 year old high school student know? On what basis will an 18 year old make a competent and well  informed career choice.

There has been a perennial unequal access to sustainable and accessible higher education career opportunities, career guidance information, education pathways beyond high school, higher education scholarship opportunities available, university profiles and faculties to learners from rural, urban, low and middle income families without tools to address the problem in Zambia.

The question being addressed and should be addressed is "How do we get our high school students to aspire for careers they don't know exists? And how do we empower schools and career guidance teachers with sustainable real-time resource information and tools needed to produce competently well informed high school students ready to handle the transitional period between high school and university.

The application is aimed at serving over 9000 schools in Zambia with over 2 million learners.

Why does this democratizing of access to higher education opportunities matter?? Well  you will agree with me that a career choice is highly dependent upon the socioeconomic status and cultural framework of the student and as such this creates a huge inequality among learners from rural, peri urban, low and middle income families.

Furthermore a career choice is an informed decision making process that should never be left to lucky or chance and as such every single kid in school deserves access to higher education career opportunities and sponsorship opportunities available beyond their localities and communities.

For far too long, we have asked an 18 year old high school graduate, what do you want to study? I do not think this is a right question to ask an 18 year old, the question assumes that an 18 year old has her/his life figured out and all higher education opportunities and University majors figured out but this is not true, this question closes the mind of the student and limits him/her with opportunities which are limited only to her small world view, goegraphical background, cultural framework and her localities and communities, anything outside that box will remain unknown, will remain unexplored.

Unischool is democratizing access to higher education opportunities available beyond learners localities, communities, geographical locations, cultural frameworks and backgrounds equitably.

Unischool is a career guidance mobile application aimed at democratizing access to higher education career opportunities, career guidance information, education pathways beyond high school, higher education scholarship opportunities, university profiles and faculties, to learners from rural, urban, low and middle income families, career guidance teachers and secondary schools.

It is an application which is home to more than 700 careers comprehensively explained in greater from certificate level to diploma level Upto degree level and industries aligned to each particular program of study for employment opportunities and career prospects, universities offering the programs, higher education scholarship opportunities available, university profiles and faculties in a single unified platform that works both offline and online.

The application is aimed at serving primary school students and higher school students through their career guidance teachers.

The application like never before gives students, career guidance teachers an opportunity to navigate through all university majors and Careers offered in Zambian universities,  higher education scholarship opportunities with all the application process guidelines clearly outlined, university profiles and faculties in order to enable them make competent career choices from an informed perspective.

The current career guidance is done on an adhoc basis, once a year on a Careers day without any sustainable and accessible tools that students can intercourse,explore beyond the reach of the seminar, and information that can be accesed in real-time.

The application is aimed at every single career guidance teachers across all secondary schools in the country as a bridge that will deliver value and information to the learners through the career guidance application.

We are team of 3 people, we have a Chief Technology Officer who is in charge of Software development and IT infrastructure and other technology support services who is currently a 5th year student at The Copperbelt university working towards a Bachelor of Engineering in Engineering.

Rogic Kachanta being born from the village as a son of a novice and a peasant understands the rigidities, the chokepoints, the bottlenecks, the obstruction, the speedy bumps, the service gaps, the pain points he had to overcome in accessing higher education opportunities and in getting to the top most university in the country and being the first in the family to enroll into a university and as such he's intent upon bridging the gap between high school and university and democratize access to higher education opportunities.

During his stay at the university, he had a rare glimpse of reality of some missing particle of time and space dying to be solved when he observedthe repeatability of how freshmen wished knew better and how they regretted not having been exposed early enough to other university majors beyond their localities and communities and how they were forced to enroll into programs they never imagined or envisioned themselves but due to the results they got from the first year university entry exams. Due to this problem and his own experience, Rogic wrote a career guidance book " Careers and Opportunities in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics and late last year launched a career guidance mobile application as a blueprint for career guidance to be used by all secondary schools in collaboration with the government .

Our chief operating officer is a teacher by profession and that has helped us understand the problem better from a teachers point of view.

We were working with the Kitwe district Education Board Secretary, district career guidance coordinators to fully understand and unlock the rigidities and chokepoints and bottlenecks surrounding career guidance, run questionaires and career guidance seminars in collaboration with the career guidance district coordinators.

All so participated with the SOS children's village career fare held last year 2022

Convenience, easy to navigate through at a click of a button without the need to type, all higher education opportunities and sponsorship opportunities and University profiles and faculties are accessible in a single unified platform, it works both offline and online to cater for areas with low internet connectivity and it can be updated in real time.

The application will empower schools and career guidance teachers with sustainable and updated higher education career opportunities in order to produce competently well informed high school students ready to handle the transitional period between high school and university with much ease.

Our impact goals are the following.

1. To reach out to 8000 primary schools across the country.

2. To out to 1009 secondary schools.

3. To partner with universities and colleges and provide them with a platform through the application to reach the learners from secondary schools.

This will be achieved by partnering with the government through the ministry of education to adopt the application for use by all its secondary schools in the country and secondly by partnering with other stakeholders in the education sector such as UNESCO, UNICEF to deliver value to the learners 

The innovation uses a mobile application technology to deliver value to the learners through their career guidance teachers and secondary schools, the application works both offline and online to cater for areas with low internet connectivity. Once the application is downloaded, it can work anywhere.

In its first round of mass testing, the application has over 500plus downloads among career guidance teachers across 200 secondary schools with over 9000 learners.

The target is to reach out to 9000 schools with over 2million learners.

Intellectual property registration rigidities and a highly bureaucratic processes.

Low adoption rate of technological products.

Poor internet connectivity.

Highly bureaucratic government processes.

Lack of financial capacity for business development services, capacity building and for scaling the innovation across the country and data hosting costs.

None at the moment we're negotiating with the government of Zambia through the ministry of education with negotiations reaching an advanced stage.

Our business model is business to business subscription. The school subscribes to the application to unlock the application features.

Once  the features are unlocked the career guidance teachers gets access to.

1. More than 700 careers and university majors comprehensively explained in greater detail and industries aligned to each particular program of study. 

2. All higher education scholarship opportunities and with all the application process guidelines clearly outlined.

3. All skills development bursaries with all the application process guidelines clearly outlined.

4. All top Zambian university profiles and faculties and colleges and reviews.

5. All top Skills development centres per province with all their profiles and faculties.

1.Our business model is business to business subscription, the private schools use our application through their career guidance teachers.

2. Intermidiary, we provide a platform for universities to list their openings and calls for enrollment within the application and students can apply.

3. Service contracts to governments, the government subscribe to the application for its schools to use the application