Mitigating COVID19 Learning Loss through AI driven adaptive software, "Mindspark" in South Africa and India: A Collaborative Initiative.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant loss of learning for students across the world. According to a report by the World Bank, this generation of students risks losing $17 trillion in lifetime earnings in present value, or about 14 percent of today’s global GDP, as a result of COVID-19 pandemic-related school closures.
Education is the most powerful tool to improve and shape the lives of young people. Still, education systems face huge problems - from vastly unequal access to the growing costs of modernization or stalling social mobility.
Multiple research studies have shown that the children from impoverished and disadvantaged groups tend to have the lowest learning levels and the highest ratio of school dropout rates. Every child deserves a quality education, and a technology-driven education program like Ei-Mindspark can bring this equality, most urgently now when the COVID19 "Learning Loss" is impacting the performance of millions of students worldwide.
To address to root causes of inequities, whatever the solution offering may be to address the critical educational needs of the students globally, the efforts must be initiated and supported at the grassroots, albeit within a collaborative ecosystem, to effect and sustain system change.
The initiative to address the educational gap and the COVID19 learning loss in both South Africa and India is such an example: Grassroots mobilization led by Acorn Foundation in South Africa (SA) and Study Hall Education Foundation, India, in collaboration with Educational Initiatives of India, the innovator of the Mindspark solution, and philanthropic individuals and organizations including Paul Flowerman of PLT Health Solutions, and Mona Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization in the US with focus on education and gender equality. The writing below provides details on this initiative and the next steps.
About Educational Initiatives (Ei), India
Established in 2000, Educational Initiatives (Ei) is a renowned organization dedicated to educational research, assessments, and personalized learning tools. Its primary objective is to enhance the quality of education in schools, benefiting students and government systems on a large scale. With a global focus, EI has undertaken numerous education-related projects across Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
With over two decades of experience in the edtech space, Ei has a vast pool of student-data that enables them to diagnose and remediate learning gaps and create a systematic shift in the way teachers teach and students learn. Ei’s initiatives have impacted the lives of over 12 million students across various grades. To support the endeavors, EI has established offices or teams in India, UAE, South Africa, Ghana, Oman, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.
About Ei-Mindspark
Educational Initiatives (EI) introduced Ei-Mindspark in 2008, drawing upon a decade of research and studies in learning assessment. When implemented within a school setting, Ei-Mindspark seamlessly aligns with the curriculum. Teachers have the ability to control topic activation and utilize the data provided to gain insights into student progress and areas requiring further attention. Ei-Mindspark functions as a Personalized Adaptive Learning (PAL) system that amalgamates cutting-edge developments in pedagogy and technology, yielding substantial improvements in student learning outcomes.
PAL embodies a learner-centric pedagogical approach, optimizing the pace of learning and instructional methods to meet the unique needs of each student. The adaptive learning system responds dynamically by providing content and methodologies tailored to guide students toward mastery of specific learning objectives. PAL has demonstrated its efficacy in enhancing learning levels across students with diverse learning abilities and styles.
Ei-Mindspark has been recognized by World Bank, Harvard, Stanford, The Economist, WISE, and Brookings, further affirming its significance in the field of education.
Mona Foundation, PLT, and Educational Initiatives
We have always believed that alone, we are a drop. Together a surging sea. We aim to collaborate with likeminded organizations, institutions, corporations and foundations to collectively level the playing field, scale our reach and impact, and improve quality of teaching and learning for more students.
To this end, in 2021 we welcomed a collaborative partnership with the philanthropist, Paul Flowerman, the Chairman of PLT Health Solutions and Educational Initiatives to provide access to Mindspark to disadvantaged students in both India and South Africa. The 2022 results speak for themselves:
- In India:
- 200,000+ students were provided access to Mindspark in 250+ schools and 5,000+ learning centers spread across 15 states in India.
- 1,000+ teachers and 28,000+ parents were trained or engaged in support of their children’s education.
- In South Africa with support from implementation partner, JET Education Services in Steenberg and Mitchells Plain of Western Cape, South Africa the Mindspark program:
- Was implemented in 6 primary public schools.
- 1,200+ children in Grades 4 and 5 trained
- 30+ teachers trained.
Mona Foundation is committed to leveraging every proven approach including the use of technologies such as Mindspark to enable capacity building at the grassroots to improve the quality of teaching and learning for students at scale. This includes the most recent collaborative initiative with PLT and Ei in India and Africa specifically in working with locally founded organizations to address the COVID19 "Learning Loss" for marginalized students in South Africa and India.
The diagram below shows how Ei is envisioning capacity building at the grassroots, leveraging the AI driven technology, and a robust monitoring and evaluation protocol to bridging the gap in children and improve "Learning with Understanding."
EI partnership with Acorn Foundation, South Africa, and Study Hall Educational Foundation, India, PLT and Mona Foundation
Education is the most powerful tool to improve and shape the lives of young people. Still, education systems face huge problems - from vastly unequal access to the growing costs of modernization or stalling social mobility. Technology - designed, used, and implemented effectively - provides an increasingly sophisticated set of tools to help us address them.
"South Africa has one of the unequal schooling systems in the world. Children in the top 200 schools
achieve more mathematics distinctions than those in the next 6,600 schools combined. The playing field must be levelled." Every child deserves a quality education, and a technology-driven education program like Ei-Mindspark can bring this equality.
To date, in South Africa, the Mindspark program is running in 6 primary public schools with support from implementation partner, JET Education Services in Steenberg and Mitchells Plain of Western Cape, South Africa catering to 1200+ children in Grades 4,5 for 2022 (5,6 for 2023). 30+ teachers are trained for the program.
About the Partners:
Acorn Foundation, Capetown, SA
Acorn Education's mission is "to deliver an exceptional and transformative education in collaboration with parents and the community. We strive to nurture independent, diligent individuals of integrity who are dedicated to serving others and realizing their potential in tertiary education, the workplace, and life in general." Acorn established Apex High School in January 2018 and currently has 1200 students, grade 8-12. Apex High operates as a non-fee-paying school, aiming to compete with the best and redefine what is achievable for all learners through hard work and a culture of high expectations.
Study Hall Education Foundation (SHEF)
is a non-profit based in Lucknow, India, that has been working to provide quality education to underprivileged youth in urban and rural India using feminist-based pedagogy, gender sensitization techniques and adolescent empowerment discussions on social issues in the classrooms. Founded in 2003, Prerna Girls School provides K-12 education to 1,082 underprivileged girls using its own unique pedagogy to help them
see themselves as equal and autonomous individuals deserving of respect, to understand the oppression they face, and to develop the skills to overcome it.
In 2022, the school held its convocation ceremony after a two-year break due to the global pandemic. with support from Mona Foundation 43 graduating students were awarded scholarships to continue their higher education.
The project overview
Acorn Education will start implementing the initiative starting immediately after the South African mid-year school break for 2023. The project will provide access to device and Mindspark to 377 students. It will run for a period of 18 months, beginning in July 2023 and concluding in December 2024. Acorn students will have access to device on 1:1 ratio.
SHEF in collaboration with Ei will implement a 1-year pilot program to improve the learning outcomes of 140 students in Hindi, Math, and English in Prerna school in Lucknow. The school’s existing ICT infrastructure will be leveraged to embed Mindspark into the regular school instruction. This will be done with support from one field staff. For any additional hardware required, SHEF will raise the resources.
The aim is to enable children in Grades 3 and 4 to attain FLN skills and leverage the evidence of impact demonstrated, to advocate for large scale implementation of the program.
Budget Estimates and a Collaborative Funding Model
Collaborative partnerships enable scaling reach and impact because it also pulls the resources of the local, national and international corporations and agencies to fund projects beyond the limits of individual financial resources. The total below shows the contribution of the three partners to the total budget of $28,934:
- Acorn: 50% of cost of implementation in SA, or $12,637
- Philanthropist, Paul Flowerman: $8,148
- Mona Foundation: $8,148.
We will be closely monitoring this initiative and will report back to our supporters the results as we receive them in the next several months.
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