bina: precision education at scale

There's a lot to hate about schooling as we know it. Homeschooling is not a fit for most families as it requires time, knowledge, and skills. We need another option that reflects life today. 

Instead of old school, bina offers a whole primary experience that is transnational and mobile. Precision Education bridges the gap between personalisation and standardisation so that the highest educational outcomes and joy fit families everywhere. 

A massive global trend shows an increasing loss of trust in traditional schools. We know that there are 300 million actively homeschooled kids globally, and this number is rapidly increasing. Educators are leaving the profession at unprecedented rates. 

Moreover, employers are scrambling to attract, retain, and diversify talent. Providing schooling would offer a massive retention effect. (21% of Millenials and Gen Zs have changed jobs in the past year, and only 28% want to stay.)

With high-speed connectivity predicted to reach nearly 5 billion people by 2026, digital education will explode globally. We need to make sure it is built wisely and ethically.

bina is a global, mobile, full schooling experience for 4-12-year-olds. 

Here's how learners experience this: 

Micro classes of seven students (a third of an average class). Attention matters most, and we are designed for that. 

Master Teachers with advanced degrees and at least five years of experience teaching in schools around the globe. They continuously train to expand their knowledge and skills.

Transnational education: Our students and families spend hours every day with people from the very north to the very south of their timezone. 

Precision Education is a balance between personalisation and standardisation crafted by tech to support humans. Students' learning experiences echo their needs, abilities, and interests. We craft valuable feedback and tailor learning paths based on each child's real-time progress data.

We cover and exceed the UK & Australian standards and the US Common Core, incorporating elements of the IB PYP framework. 

Our SEL program reflects our respect for each learner for who they are. We grow together through impartial observations, reflections, and bite-sized actionable feedback. We work towards approaching each other with wonder, vulnerability, empathy, and openness. 

We teach thematically, each unit around a different biome. By travelling through perspectives and narratives, we use practical, everyday concepts to learn and practice math, science, phonics, arts, and being ourselves on the globe. For example, when studying a rainforest biome, students can learn about the flora and fauna that live in the rainforest, the indigenous cultures that depend on it, the climate patterns that influence it, and the impact of deforestation on the environment. This helps students make connections between different subjects and develop a deeper understanding of the topic.

Here's how we are building it: 

We layered the anglosphere's standards to ensure we covered them all. We adjusted those for cultural inclusion. We segmented those into micro-credentials.

That holds two types of data: 

1. Content: for the live lessons/for kids to practice with each other and independently/actionable suggestions for families to participate and support the learning. 

2. Micro evidence: each learner has their own version of the map. As they progress, we populate it with their learning evidence. This allows us to gain an end-to-end understanding of each student's development and progress and react in real-time. 

Educating kids digitally still involves UX pains because, before bina, one could either offer varied, active experiences OR a continuous, shared, "together" held learning space is essential for learning. 

Most educational games and experiences already on the market are (and likely will be) built only on two game engines. We are composing a way for educators to place their groups of students in specific locations within these experiences while still holding the mutual "learning space", meaning they still see and hear their peers and educators and take their tools with them. All this while collecting their micro-learning-evidence from each experience.  

We then can look at patterns to understand when they're performing at their best– what environments prompt the most joy and engagement. Then educators continually curate their learning experiences based on that data. 

bina now serves families in need of untraditional schooling in 5 time zones. We group our early adopters into 4:

1. Multicultural setting- we see the full range from refugees to global trotters.

2. No access- "they do not educate girls in our region," "there is only religious ed here, and that's not our jam," "we live two hours away from the nearest school." 

3. Special needs- families with special medical conditions, learning and emotional needs (safety concerns are common!)

4. Families that look at old school and are uncompelled by the system, as it were.  

We have a student in a war zone, a student on the run with her mom from domestic violence, students with ADHD and spectrum, and a hospital-bound child learning daily with their peers from all over the globe. 

We are now starting to cater to communities and tackle hubs (hopefully integrating senior citizens and young adults!). bina's families treat us as a "life-save".

Our team is a transnational group from 10+ countries across multiple continents. We are passionate about the intersection of community, education, and technology. We come from a wide range of backgrounds: culturally, educationally, and professionally. We have all worked and served globally. 

From the beginning, we have been active listeners, involving the voices of our target population every step of the way. Our founder, Noam, spent seven years travelling the globe, interviewing little humans and their adults to understand the differences and similarities between the schooling systems and how people within them feel and think. Julia, our head of education, has lived, worked and designed education in the most forward-thinking institutions globally. 

bina belongs to its community and is continuously built by it. Everyone involved has a say, and very soon, everyone will own part of its business (kids too!). We are in constant dialogue with our enrolled families: through Telegram, video chats, email, and student-related updates on our academic platforms. We host bi-monthly conversations with our families to stay up-to-date with their ideas, concerns, and questions. 

Our educators lead our product development with their ideas (and concerns) and are the cornerstone of what, when, and how we build.  

And the kids, our primary stakeholders, have a significant say regarding what is important to them and how we could move the needle forward. We teach them to take ownership and responsibility, be accurate with their descriptions, follow up and make sure to be heard.

We are building a product that will significantly improve the lives and learning of millions of kids, families and educators. Technologically speaking, we are laying cornerstones of a virtual mega road. As we all know, these "stones" are rarely dug out and replaced. That means placing those requires deep work and consideration regarding everything from ethics to tech stack. SOLVE is best positioned with its network to help support us with our RnD and help hold us ethically accountable. We are keen to gather strategic advice from experts within the Solve community. 

We are building a new category involving the most private (as these are our babes!) and the most political. We anticipate a future in PR and lobbying. SOLVE will be of great help. 

Last but very not least, our final aim is to provide precision education to families at no cost. We are a young company right now, and though we offer financial aid to some of our families, we need to survive as we develop. Any financial assistance we receive goes directly to educating students who would not otherwise have access to our current offering. Joining Solve would also increase exposure as we seek to gain enrollments and supporters.

As a global, comprehensive digital primary school, bina is the first to provide precision education (optimizing for educational outcomes and joy). Our long-term goal is to be able to provide precision education to learners all over the world, at no cost to families. Here are some of the ways that we are providing innovative solutions:

• Exceeding international standards.

• First mobile, whole schooling experience for students, educators and families.  

• Quick and easy transitions to educational products, all through one school app.  

Technical main features:

• Flexible integration of the latest and greatest ed-tech

• Privacy-preserving big data backend

• Automated real-time valuable feedback for students, educators and families through deploying ML and narrow AI 

• Cross-platform data analysis crafting:

  • Adaptive learning paths 

  • Scheduling optimization

  • Smart matching learning groups

• Leveraging cloud infrastructure and 5G

• Educator time optimization

• Ops work: automated  

Educational main features: 

• Proprietary bina curricular map

• bina's social-emotional learning program 

• Certified, experienced global educators, teaching full-time. 

• All lessons are live, active and collaborative.

• Micro classes of 6-8 students

• Continuous gamified assessment 

• Personalized learning techniques support

• Educator assessment & training 

• Smart accreditation

• Covering and exceeding international standards, 

• Simple, actionable suggestions on supporting growth for families

We run a comprehensive online school for 25 families in 10 countries (B2C), making revenue and providing cross-subsidy development of the bina product and brand. Our B2C early adopters include families with special needs, families without easy access to quality schooling, and international families. We are on track to serving 100 fully paying students and 20 financial aid students by year-end and completing our accreditation process this June. 

We are already building bina's community-based sales funnel, finding the pre-grouped people that need our support most. Our next sales channel exploration is B2B2C, working with HR departments of established companies offering childcare benefits and medium-high-growth companies looking to attract and retain millennial/Genz talent.

As our tech-based methodology is ready to scale, we can start supporting large organisations with school-as-a-service. bina will support the opening and running of digital and hybrid schools, making the entire process streamlined. We aim to provide high-quality precision education at no cost to families worldwide.

Educational outcomes: We measure student progress on a daily basis, collecting data and keeping track through the use of micro-credentials. We pay close attention to academic, social, and emotional development, as well as what brings our learners joy.

Educator feedback: Our educators complete a daily feedback form, which gives us real-time data about our solution and how we can improve the overall experience for our students, families, and teachers. 

Enrollment growth: One of our biggest goals this year is to increase enrollment. We have a multi-faceted plan in place, and we are already seeing great progress toward building the size of our community.

Inputs:

• Students, families, and educators worldwide meet daily in synchronous lessons and meetings.

• A learning culture that treats all stakeholders as learners, including educators, students, and families.

• Skilled educators with expertise in delivering precision education.

• Tiny groups of wisely-matched peer groups for optimal learning experiences.

• A research-based curriculum designed with micro-credentials for precision education that aligns with established international standards and is adjusted for cultural awareness.

• A technology infrastructure and platform that enables the collection and labelling of micro-learning-evidence for personalized learning and data-driven instruction

• Integration with existing digital education games and products

• Partnerships with organizations and foundations that support the mission of providing free precision education to families

Activities:

• Build a product that delivers precision education and fosters a learning culture that treats all stakeholders as learners.

• Hire and continually train skilled educators who deliver precision education and utilize tiny groups of wisely-matched peer groups for optimal learning experiences.

• Develop, refine, and map a research-based curriculum designed with micro-credentials for precision education aligned with established international standards.

• Build and maintain a technology infrastructure and platform that enables the collection and labelling of micro-learning-evidence and a seamless user experience for students and families.

• Create easy paths to collaborations with existing digital education games and products and bring those into the bina experience.

• Forge partnerships with organizations and foundations that support the mission of providing free precision education to families.

Outputs:

• Precision education is delivered at scale through a technology platform that supports humans to provide data-driven instruction.

• Educators who deliver precision education.

• A research-based curriculum designed with micro-credentials for precision education.

• A technology infrastructure and platform that enables the collection and labelling of micro-learning evidence for personalized learning and data-driven instruction.

• Increased access to the highest-quality education for families.

• Improved educational outcomes for students, educators and families who receive precision education, as measured by academic achievement, engagement, and joy!

• Enhanced continuous professional development for educators who specialize in precision education

• Integration with existing digital education games and products to enrich the learning experience

Short-term outcomes:

• Precision education at scale, free for families, with daily synchronous lessons and meetings worldwide.

• A learning culture that treats all stakeholders as learners, including educators, students, and families.

• Individualized learning paths based on micro-credentials and transparent learning data.

• Seamless user experience for students and families.

• Cultural awareness in the curriculum design.

• Collaboration with existing digital education games and products to enhance the bina experience.

• Ongoing partnerships with organizations and foundations to support the mission of providing free precision education to families.

Long-term outcomes:

• Increased equity in education by providing free precision education regardless of geo-economic circumstances

• Improved academic and life outcomes for learners who receive precision education

• A more efficient and effective education system enables teachers' time to be spent mainly with their students. 

• Increased transparency and pace of responsivity at scale

• Improved public understanding and appreciation of the benefits of precision education, which can help to drive policy changes that support its expansion and adoption

Guidelines:

• We are building tech for smooth synchronous learning experiences for littles and their adults. 

• Our platform's primary goal is to optimise educators' time with students, as it is the most valuable and expensive resource. 

• We are basing our DB on a curricular map that exceeds international standards and comprises micro-credentials. 

• We populate each micro-component with content for lessons(educators), practice(peers) and support (families). 

• We integrate field-specific solutions 3rd parties, allowing real-time educator navigation through different digital realms for classes to experience together. 

• Each individual has a map copy collecting their learning evidence. 

• We collect and analyse data to provide valuable real-time feedback and offer approachable, actionable education to all learners- children, educators and families. 

Technical MVP requirements:

• We first build the essential comms tools as the connective tissue for both the bina community and the more advanced tech.

• Ultra flexible for new tech adoption, features, and 3rd-party tools (minimal effort for narrow AI integration)

• No vendor lock-in

• A tiny team that moves fast- X to DevOps, X to infrastructure maintenance. 

Advantages:

• Cross-board open-source code. Popular tools maintained by communities of developers with tracked security and edge development trends.

• No vendor lock-in. The codebase is easily extracted from services and can be hosted on a custom cloud service infrastructure.

• Easier integration of external 3rd-party services

• One programming language for business logic (Javascript) and proven SQL.

• Reduced dependency on DevOps or cloud configuration, more focus on feature development.

Frameworks and tech tools:

• Mobile cross-platform development: React-Native / Expo + maintained ready-to-use components library.

• Web frontend: Nextjs / React

• Database: Postgres DB

  • Postgres for REST API

  • GraphQL included

  • Edge functions deployable to AWS Lambda or similar distributed computing services

• Business logic layer:

  • Database Functions

  • Edge Functions

  • Realtime pub-sub service for instant messaging

• Push notifications, SMS: Twilio

• AI & ML (experimentation): VertexAI, Tensorflow

Current Features:

• Web and mobile apps

• Complete registration & flexible authentication flow (educators, students, family members and admins with differentiated views).

• User profile

• Permissions management & flexible user roles (inc. custom roles)

• Collaborative Cal with varying permissions

• Lesson and Attendance management

• Attendance stats & reporting. Easy to filter per user and per group results.

• Passhubs - log-in & password storage for external resources related to lessons.

• Flexible notifications management 

• Instant messaging between all users with flex restrictions 

• Integration of 3rd-party video conferencing (without vendor lock-in) to replace existing 3rd-party proprietary tools (simplify for kids and teachers)

Next on the roadmap:

• UX/UI implementation

• Integration of ML-AI streaming analysis tool

• Automation of learning evidence collection and tagging 

• Learner development insights generating real-time feedback 

• Anchoring API dev

Our end goal, high-quality education for all at no cost, stems from our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusivity. We offer the most inclusive and wide ranged primary education out there! Special needs with typical, religious with queer, all races, languages, genders, geographies, cultures and socio-economic backgrounds learn together everyday in bina. Our community is strengthened by our diversity, and we actively support our learners in engaging across their differences and celebrating our transnationalism. 

Our all-female leadership team is led by a Middle Eastern bi-identifying woman. We actively seek out a wide range of perspectives from our diverse advisors. It is of utmost importance to us that our learners, families, and bina staff members feel welcome, safe, respected, heard, supported, and valued.

While we build the tech-based-methodology, we are a tuition-based B2C model providing schooling directly to families. We are building the product deliberately B2C. We are now starting to build a sales funnel targeting communities and then employers to offer affordable and high-quality education to their community members and staff. 

Our aim is to end up providing to incredibly large institutions offering precision education at scale free for families. This SaaS model will rapidly open and run hybrid schools while drastically improving the quality of primary education everywhere.

With our tuition, we are less than 6 months from self-sustaining (now at ~$200k ARR).

We are building the world's only precision education platform, offering quality education at scale. Taizo Son, Lord Knight, Jutta Steiner, 27v, S16, Angel Invest, and the bina families supported our early growth ($1.2M). Our top choice ed tech fund, Sparkmind, is leading bina's seed round. This 2.5m raise is split into two tranches:

1. $500K now at 5M pre-money note, led by Sparkmind with $250k. Existing investors and some fabulous operators are joining, for us to break even within the next six months. 

2. Sparkmind will lead the priced round with a $2M ticket later this year.