Whizz Education has been shortlisted for a Learning Technologies Award for the Best learning technologies project – public/non-profit sector for the company’s work to elevate the learning of students in rural Kenya to international standards in maths.
Project iMlango was established in May 2015 as part of the Girls’ Education Challenge, launched by DFID to afford the world’s poorest girls an opportunity to improve their lives through education. iMlango is a ground-breaking partnership between public and private sector organisations, operating in schools in four counties across Kenya: Uasin Gishu, Kilifi, Kajiado and Makueni.
Svetlana Tarassova, Global Strategic Partnerships Director explains: “Whizz Education has had responsibility both for delivering learning outcomes in maths and for building capacity of key education stakeholders to achieve success and has both trained and supported over 3,000 teachers in 205 rural schools to implement ICT, reaching over 100,000 students, many of whom have been marginalised by issues related to poverty.
“As part of Project iMlango, schools have access to a range of planning, support and training services in addition to resources including the award-winning Maths-Whizz virtual tutoring programme. This included upskilling teachers plus the development and introduction of a bilingual version of Maths-Whizz that allows students to experience lessons in either English or Kiswahili, depending on their needs.
“The course correction model we employed through our experienced education success partners has determined an approach to working with data whereby it is reviewed in real-time, paired with in-field observations, and used to drive continuous improvement through targeted, measurable actions.”
The Maths-Whizz virtual tutor itself is a digital learning service that simulates the most effective instructional behaviours of a human tutor. While not designed to replace one-to-one human interaction, it offers teachers and students support, providing content that adapts to different levels of attainment and pace of learning. Maths-Whizz uses powerful AI to build a completely personalised plan for each child and then continues to tailor it as they complete lessons. Continuous assessments and data mining offer insight to teachers, enabling improved learning efficiency and maths’ fluency.
Tarassova continues: “The project demonstrated that with the right implementation, planning, support and technology, students in resource-constrained environments such as iMlango can expect to enjoy learning progress comparable with students in more developed contexts. We are now proud that our sustained effort in Kenya to improve learning outcomes has been recognised through this prestigious Learning Technologies award nomination.”
1.5 million children around the world have now benefited from using the Maths-Whizz virtual tutor. Research conducted with over 12,000 students and verified by independent experts, demonstrates that children who learn with Maths-Whizz Tutor for 45-60 minutes a week increase their Maths Age by an average of 18 months in their first year.
