PrepClassNG

Prep Academy connects african learners with professional local tutors that can help them reach their learning goals for any subject

Two problems are at work, the first is the huge decline in learning outcomes and exam performance in Nigeria which is largely attributed to the high class population density -the average teacher:student ratio in Nigeria is 1:60 instead of 1:20 in line with UN recommendations. There’s also the problem of under-utilization of skill and time based assets. Nigeria has serious unemployment and underemployment problems as a lot of graduates and skilled youths are unable to find job. Prepclass makes it possible for teachers and skilled individuals to indicate interest in tutoring subjects of their interest.

2. Solution we propose

To solve the aforementioned problem, we have developed

1. Tutor Marketplace Solution: A tutor marketplace solution, an online platform that connects learners to independent tutors for one-on-one class engagement, providing high quality personalized education that focuses on the learner’s strengths and weaknesses. The tutor marketplace platform allows learners to find, evaluate, schedule, pay for and track lessons with a verified local tutor in any subject, skill or exam. With this solution we have reached over 4000 learners and increased their learning outcomes by 90%.

To further increase the reach and impact of our  work across rural and urban areas, we launched Prepclass app which has reached over 20,000 students in Nigeria. Prepaclass app is a mobile academy application that contains thousands of locally relevant educational videos with short quizzes created by trained local specialist teachers for the various African curricula available for online or offline consumption. The mobile academy provides a flipped classroom model and our differentiating factors include

1. High quality professional academic video content adapted to local curriculum

2. Offline availability

2. Baseline and Formative assessment on skill competencies

3. Detailed learning analytics on the user dashboard

With this solution, on one end, we are providing quality educational content to students and on the other end, we make it possible for highly skilled teachers and tutors to earn extra income.

3. How our Solution is changing the world

Since we started in 2015, with our tutor marketplace platform we have worked with over 3000 families in Nigeria, facilitated 2700 tutor-learner connection, carried out over 180,000 hours of tutoring, and increased the learning outcome of our students by 90%. Through our shared economy model, we have generated over $780,000 income and paid over $550,000 to over 3000 tutors.

While we have gained significant traction with our tutor marketplace product, we know that the greatest value lies in creating a highly scalable online and offline library of interactive video content created by the best teachers according to Africa curricula. The mobile application gives the leverage of connecting several more learners with local content that is relevant to their context, further improving learning gains beyond what we have achieved in previous milestones. Already we have over 20,000 downloads of our Prep Academy app

Nigeria happens to be the most mobilized country in the world and videos accounts for 25 - 30% of mobile data consumption. PrepAcademy leverages increased mobile and broadband penetration to make the best quality of locally education content and test prep available to students to help them increase their learning outcomes in Nigeria. Currently, no edtech solution across Nigeria is dedicated to delivering downloadable high quality professional academic video content using local curriculum with local professional teachers in local languages. 

1. Prepclass tutor market place uses technology to:

Manage lead requests and map geographical location of learner and tutor

Manage course content tutor provides the tutor

Track and evaluate learner performance and improvement

2. Consumer-facing Software- (Mobile Application- Prepclass App)- It is a learning App that hosts all the curated videos categorized according to African curriculum. The technology stack includes: the progressive technology of ReactNative, making it easy to scale to other platforms in the future. the app communicates with our backend that is built on the LAMPP stack and Laravel PHP Framework

Our next milestone over the next 12 months is to

1. Invest in scalable marketing strategies that would drive increased learner acquisition, increase our learner base to 3000 ongoing learners (month on month), roughly $300,000 per month

2. Curate a database of 2000 videos across different subject matters and languages in line with the curriculum.

3. Implement and launch a low-cost revenue model for our app ($5/month)

4. Invest in hiring and training the best team for technology development, content curation and video production

Over the next 3-5 years, PrepAcademy will be increasing learning outcomes for 1.5 million students in Nigeria through a combination of 3 strategies

A. Increase our tutor market place learner base to an average of 200,000 learners within 5 years

B. Set up learning centres in strategic locations to support our online academy

C. Implementing and launching a revenue model for the mobile academy solution in order to incentivise more teachers to create content on our platform

D. Scale our solution to other parts of Africa after establishing significant or absolute market dominance in Nigeria

Prep Academy is available for download as an app on playstore.

1.      The learner selects his class and subject combination

2. The learner takes a baseline assessment that determines his skills competencies

3. The results structures the learning pathway

4. The learner engages the videos and completes assessment periodically

5. The learner is periodically kept up-to-date with his progress by viewing the learner analytic dashboard.

Currently, 25,000 learners use our mobile app.

Over 5000 people have used our marketplace

K-12: These are learners (75% of our target) within the age range of 4 to 16 years in primary/secondary school looking to improve their different subject matter competencies.

Test Preparation: These are learners (25% of our target) within the age range of 16 to 35 writing standardized examination to gain admission into an institution e.g IGCSE, GRE, MBA, SAT.

In 12 months, we expect to serve 500, 000 students monthly through our mobile app by offering them curated content, testing and detailed learning analytics of their progress.

In 3 years, we estimate that we would be serving over 1.5 million students across Nigeria.

Through our solution, the beneficiaries are able to access learning content

1. In their local languages to facilitate increased learning.

2. At anytime and at any location

3. 3. Online access, learners can connect and learn offline as well as online. This is a huge incentive for the Nigerian market

Prepclass is made up of 2 co-founders (Obanor Chukwuwezam- CEO and Ogunlana Olumide-COO), 5 man board of directors and a 22 man staff. The 2 cofounders have a collective experience of more than 10 years in product management, online marketing (managed over $1M advert spend), business intelligence working for Rocket Internet companies like Jumia, Jovago, and Kaymu and an educationalist background of more than 26 years running the largest chain of schools in Isolo, Lagos, Nigeria. Our advisory board have led successful education brands in Nigeria,

For the Prepclass app, we employ a subscription model, users pay a subscription fee per month (€4.05) to get access to watch lessons and get access to detailed learning analytics and formative testing.

Our plan for sustainability is to carve out more earned income strategies through innovative strategies. Our financial sustainability plan includes

1. Leverage on Profitability: Implementing and launching a revenue model for the mobile academy solution targeted at University students. To achieve this, we need to

1. Invest in scalable marketing strategies that would drive our sales margins by increasing customer acquisition.

2. Access Capital: To properly execute our plans, we intend to leverage on equity infusions, loans and grants

3. Leverage Innovation: We are also investing in have a strong offline component in the form of centres where we can facilitate small group classes instead strictly 1 - 1 learning.

To support this growth, we are continually investing in hiring and training the best team for technology development, content curation, video production and business development.

We are convinced that Prepclass approach to tackling problems around education and employment in Nigeria has had huge impact on the society. Though we have made significant traction, we are convinced that we have barely scratched the surface. Applying to Solve would help us scale so as to reach our vision. We hope to leverage the Solve platform to learn from mentors and industry experts and apply their insights to our market. Beyond that, through Solve, we want to intentionally create partnerships to help us achieve our goals by refining our model, learning new tools.  

1. Risk: Scaling to reach more clients

Mitigation: We’re working on overcoming this challenge by investing in learner acquisition strategies through offline and online marketing.

2. Risk: building effective revenue generation into our model to accommodate growing costs

Mitigation: We have partnered with the largest telecomms provider in Nigeria to integrate a payment service into the mobile academy app