Ileemore

An e-learning platform that helps West African secondary school students prepare for matriculation examinations with learning analytics to provide assessment in learning.

An e-learning platform that helps students prepare for matriculation examinations and provides teachers with strength and weakness analysis of students to improve learning outcomes.

The platform enables West African students to take tests on past questions of matriculation examinations. We present the answers in a comprehensible, conversational and interactive approach with the aid of diagrams and animations to drive home the point. Students can take tests based on topics, get formative feedback and learn adaptively. Students can also ask their own questions and get quality answers from our tutors.

Based on these engagements, we want to do a Question-Level Analysis using learning engineering, neuroscience, AI and Data Science to analyze each student's strengths and weaknesses, for each subject.

With the solution, students are being assessed as they learn and given the help they need before taking an examination. This will further give students all the help they need to gain admission into a tertiary institution, develop their potentials and live a good life.

The platform can be assessed through a web and android app. We also deploy a regularly-updated offline version of the platform on computers via an intranet - made up of mainly a raspberry pie and router.

In Nigeria, based on the statistics released by JAMB (Joint Admission Matriculation Board) and WAEC (West Africa Examination Council), about one million students fail at least one of the matriculation examinations needed for admission into tertiary institutions, every year and have to wait another year before they can retake the exam. Last year, 2021, 1.1 million students failed the UTME(Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination) out of the 1,340,003 candidates who registered. That is a 86% failure rate. 

Yet, parents spend close to one billion dollars on extramural lessons, past questions textbooks and exam fees every year. It’s heartbreaking to know that 51% of these parents live below the poverty line of $2 per day and are only striving to give their kids the best education and a good life. 

This problem exists because of a lack of quality educational content especially in the area of test preparations.

This problem can have a direct implication on Africa’s labour force as the continent’s population is expected to double to about 2.4 billion by 2050, making it home to the world's largest working-age population. This can render the growing population unequipped for the future of work.

In the short term, this problem has a psychological effect on the students. Most of them are depressed and don't see themselves capable of achieving academic excellence. In the last six years, there were five recorded cases of students who committed suicide for failing the UTME.

Value Proposition

Students: We help students prepare for matriculation examinations with well-solved and well-explained past questions as opposed to what they get in their usual past question textbooks and other test prep platforms.

Teachers: We help teachers quickly identify the areas of weakness of students at a micro-level, individual and class-level. A teacher can know the specific sub-topic a student or a class is not performing well in before they take a matriculation examination. Teachers can then stretch and challenges students, with the data and resources we give them. We also reduce the teacher workload.

I am so passionate about developing this solution because I faced the same problem it solves.

In 2015, I co-ran an initiative that provided free, quality on-site tutorials to secondary school students from low-income communities as a response to the mass failure of matriculation examinations. I was able to witness firsthand, the problems inherent in the education space.  My tutoring of the students enabled me to see certain needs of students such as the need to relate what they are being taught to real-life experiences, the need to have a personalized education, having in mind the ease of access and affordability.

In 2018 when I launched my solution, ileemore.com, we signed up 500 users for the 2018 UTME, a matriculation examination in Nigeria. I interacted with all 500 of them to understand their pain points, hear their views and receive feedback on the solution. This helped me to iterate and re-develop the solution.

To date, we have reached over 1500 users and we constantly get feedback from our users.

We launched in 2018, with a $5,000 seed fund from the Tony Elumelu Foundation, signing up over 500 Nigerian students who took the 2018 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination and recorded a 90% pass rate.

In 2019, we developed a model for school partnerships, to solve the problem of hardware and internet connectivity. We were able to devise a low-cost local area network system and secured a partnership with The Smart School, Oyo State.

In July 2020, we opened up our platform for students to use for free amidst Covid-19 and school lockdown. We were able to organically attract users from the 5 Anglophone West African Countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra-Leone, Gambia and Liberia). We were recognized by the African Union Commission as one of the Top 50 Education Innovations in Africa. We emerged as one of the winners of the EduTrust Challenge by the EduTrust Foundation.

We have gotten good feedback from our users, stating that our product is better than that of our competitors.

To date, we have helped over 1500 students across the 5 English-speaking West African countries secure admission into tertiary institutions to secure a better life. We have four partnerships and $1,000 in revenue. 

Our technology is mainly software accessible through a web and android app. My solution is an e-learning platform and solely depends on the software. The stacks are HTML 5, CSS 3, MySql, Javascript and PHP.

We also deploy a regularly-updated offline version of the solution on computers via an intranet - made up of mainly a raspberry pie, networking cables and a router.

My solution currently serves 500 people for this exam season.
In the next year, I want to scale and serve 100,000 people.

In the next year, I want to help 100,000 students to pass their matriculation examinations so as to gain admission into tertiary institutions advance their life, develop their potentials and live a good life.

Already, we have an online presence in three other West African countries, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone - asides from Nigeria. In the next year, I'm looking to form partnerships with schools and tutorial centers in these countries.

I measure progress by the growth in the number of people using my solution, the pass rate of matriculation examinations. and the number of students that my solution helps to gain admission into tertiary institutions.

Financial
I currently need funding to expand the scope of our content development, develop a proper AI strength and weakness analysis service for students and also market to potential users.

Hardware
I need to support students in low-income communities with hardware such as computers.

Every member of my time has faced the problem my solution is solving. For instance, I finished secondary school, top of my class but I still had to write the UTME (a matriculation examination) 2 times before I could gain admission into a university.

My team consists of business developers with a cumulative 11 years of entrepreneurship experience across various industries. We have a software engineer with 7+ years of experience building software products across four industries. Between 2016 and 2017, I co-ran an initiative that provided free and quality tutorials to students in low-income communities.

We also have a team of facilitators who have been in the secondary school education system for 7 years and have witnessed firsthand the problems inherent.  They have tutored secondary school students and have been able to see certain needs of students such as the need to relate what they are being taught to real-life experiences, the need to have a personalized education, having in mind the ease of access and affordability.

For every user that signs up on our platform, we constantly engage them to get feedback and better understand their pain point. We also ensure that their problems are being solved.

The Smart School, Oyo State, Nigeria
Distinguished Scholars Academy, Nigeria
Miteu Agape Tutorial Centre, Nigeria

Girls account for a higher proportion of out-of-school children in Nigeria and Africa at large. They face the largest barriers in education.
According to reports, there have been 5 recorded cases of girls who committed suicide after failing the UTME, a matriculation examination in Nigeria.

Girls form a large proportion of our current user base and target market. My solution is therefore aimed to improve the quality of life of girls, give them the resources and opportunity to advance their lives and help them develop their potentials.