The Cool Solution - Cool.org

In Australia, 76% of teachers find their workload unmanageable and 45% work outside their field of expertise. An unmanageable workload and an overloaded curriculum results in teachers not having the time to incorporate engaging, evidence-based lessons and build quality relationships with their students. That's where we come in! We provide free, curriculum-aligned, action-based lessons that cover topics of environmental, social and economic sustainability. Topics that kids care about, topics that help inform educators, kids and parents about crucial issues of global importance. We also provide inexpensive professional development for educators that they can complete online, thus overcoming geographical barriers and improving the quality of teaching. In addition, we provide free activities and lessons to parents and carers to enable them to engage in their child's learning and development. This solution is proving hugely beneficial across Australia and could be readily scaled globally. 

Every child has the right to a quality education. There are many issues that impact this, and these issues vary from country to country. The elements that the Cool Solution addresses are - 

Teachers do not have time to make new, current and engaging resources.

Students learn best when presented with real-world topics of interest.

Students require 21st-century skills to adapt to the challenges of the workforce.

Quality of education is often dependant on socio-economic factors.

COVID-19 has exacerbated inequities in the provision of education.

The Cool Solution entails free education resources that are accessible to all educators, parents and carers. The content covers issues such as Human Rights, Climate Change, Racism, First Nations Peoples Voices and Perspectives, Refugees and Asylum Seekers, Cybersafety, Conservation, Enterprise Learning, Energy, Financial Literacy and so on. Many lessons can be completed independently, and many include hands-on outdoors activities, connecting kids with nature and easy to complete experiments. 

The Cool Solution has the potential to benefit every child and young person in formal and informal education across the globe. Through software, we may be able to deliver content in many languages, and we plan to expand our content to include more international perspectives and contexts.

We create education resources that are FREE to access and download via our website. Lessons require no prior knowledge, so even if you don't have an understanding of the science of climate change, for example, you can pick up a Cool lesson and begin teaching straight away.

We build the capacity of teachers to provide a quality education through our unique evidence-based education model and our online professional development courses.

We enable parents and carers to participate in their child's learning and development through free downloadable evidence-based lessons and activities. 

Our resources are FREE, aligned to the curriculum and incorporate our action-based approach to real-world learning.

Our resources embed environmental, social and economic issues into core subject areas, such as English, Science, Art and Maths. We use content that kids care about to engage them in their learning.

With the aim of empowering each and every student to become an agent of change, we give them the tools and know-how to solve real-world issues. In a sentence, our goal is to improve access to quality education so that all students can reach their full potential, now and in the future.

We currently have 149,447 members across Australia. This number has grown steadily over the last 12 years. We focus on supporting disadvantaged and marginalized schools across Australia (including rural, regional, remote & low socio-economic schools). The Australian Department of Education uses the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) to measure levels of educational advantage. ICSEA was developed to enable fair and meaningful comparisons of students' performance in literacy and numeracy in a given school with that of similar schools serving students with statistically similar backgrounds. Research has found that students in Australia’s most disadvantaged schools are about 10 times more likely to have their education hindered by chronic teacher shortages than students in wealthier schools. They are also five times more likely to be taught by a teacher who is not qualified in that subject. The research by advocacy group Save Our Schools has revealed that the gap in teaching quality and learning resources in Australia is among the widest in the developed world.

Cool Australia supports 3,720 schools with an ICSEA score that is less than 1,000. We do this by providing educators with high-quality online professional development and content delivered via easy-to-use platforms that enhance their practice.

In addition, we focus on STEM education for girls from rural, regional and remote (RRR) areas. With 552,000 female students represented in these schools, our target is to improve their STEM knowledge and skills.

The Australian context provides evidence of the efficacy of our solution. 

Periodically, an independent research organisation assesses our impact. In the 2020 research, 1,420 surveyed Cool Members asserted the below - 

-96% agree that students demonstrate improved critical thinking skills

-97% agree that students demonstrate changed attitudes towards social and environmental issues 

-95% agree that students demonstrate changed behaviour towards social and environmental issues

-93% agree that students increased their preparedness to act

-84% agree that they have become more informed on environmental or social issues and changed their behaviour as a result

-91% agree that they feel more confident to teach, and 76% feel that they are better teachers overall.

-95% of teachers say their students’ engagement is higher, 96% say their educational outcomes are improved, and 86% say retention rates are higher after using Cool Australia resources.

-98% of teachers tell us that their students' knowledge, confidence and skills in the curriculum area have improved.

We plan to take this impact to India, the USA and the UK.

The Cool Solution increases the engagement of learnings across Early Learning, Primary and Secondary, in all environments and enables parents and carers to easily and time-effectively facilitate their child’s learning and development. Our content includes quality learning experiences throughout, as our pedagogical approach is hands-on, action-based, real-world learning. Our lessons have creative STEAM activities, Project-Based Learning, experiments and outdoor play, connecting kids to nature. Our content includes lessons on eSafety for kids, including online bullying, consent, reporting and the risks of online tools and platforms. Educators are constantly upskilling when using our lessons and completing our online Professional Development courses. 

After 12 years, we have developed products that have been extremely successful in the Australian education market. In 2020 we achieved 358,016 downloads from our site and helped millions of kids learn about environmental sustainability and social issues. It is now time to extend this benefit to India, the USA and the UK.  

There are several parts of our solution that are innovative.

1. Addressing the needs of teachers to benefit students. Over the years, we have saved 8.8 million hours in teacher preparation time and informed and empowered 3.2 million students. Our approach is very innovative. Effectively we are leveraging the challenges all educators face to create an informed and empowered global citizenry.

2. Our action-based, real-world pedagogical approach is cutting edge and enables 21st-century skills. This will be completely new in some education markets as many teachers do not practice this kind of approach.

3. Our new website launching in 2022 will have a best-in-class user experience and help teachers and parents/carers further by suggesting lessons, activities and professional development based on their needs and on-site behaviours. This will be achieved by building a recommendation engine that will use ten years of user data to suggest content that applies to the user at that moment in time. 

In Australia, we currently serve 8,148 parents/carers, 141,300 teachers and 1.63 million students. In the rest of the world, we serve 11,431 Cool Members.

Our target is to grow the number of students we benefit by 20% over the coming year. By 2022 we plan to be serving 1.96 million children. 

In 5 years time, we plan to be serving 4.06 million students. 

Below we have listed the KPIs we regularly report to our Board on.

Indicators and targets for 2023

Indicator 1: Membership Engagement

Number of member = 234,714

Number of students reached = 2.35M

Number of downloads (annual) = 3,432,185

The average number of users per month = 6,985

The proportion of members from regional, rural and remote schools increase by 20%

Indicator 2: System & Website Performance

Visitors to the site

Sessions - 998,000

Users - 890,000 

Conversion Rate = 80%

UX customer success survey

Indictor 3: Student Outcomes 

Increased engagement in learning = 98%

Increased knowledge of real-world topics  = 96%

Preparedness to take action on issues raised = 95%

Six Full-Time

Six Part-Time

Two Contractors

The Team at Cool Australia is made up primarily of ex-teachers. The resources we produce are created with their vast knowledge and experience. We also consult with current teachers in the production of resources. Our team members, who are parents and carers, also provide valuable input into how we create resources and what topics they are based on.

Links to the teams Linkedin profiles are below.

Jason Kimberley - CEO and Founder

Thea Stinear - General Manger

Craig Simon - Head of Growth

Anna Nettlefold - Head of Partnerships

Naomi Nicholas - Head of Community Engagement

Mark Drummond - Head of Education

Michael Wilkin - Head of Digital Marketing

Janine Meadley - Education Specialist

Adela Kusur - Education Project Lead

Krista Nisi - Head Writer

Marie Young - Graphic Design/Digital Support Officer

In line with our core values, we are committed to building and maintaining a positive and inclusive work environment. We have several internal policies to achieve equal opportunity and fair treatment in a work environment free of discrimination, victimisation, bullying, and harassment. Our governance structure ensures these policies are adhered to at all times.

The Cool Solution is not limited by geography. Our Solution is proven to engage kids, help educators and parents and increase the quality of education. There are no financial limitations to accessing the Cool Solution for our communities. The Cool Solution is based on research and a proven pedagogical model. It upskills teachers while they use our lessons to address their immediate and pressing need to engage their students. Educators, parents and carers need to prepare kids for the future. We enable them to do this. We want to share the Cool benefits and impact across the globe.

For Cool to be successful globally, we need to work on our brand recognition in the USA, India and the UK. We also need to commit time and money to research our target markets and adapt our products to suit their education ecosystems. 

Becoming a Solve Team will go a long way to achieving brand recognition and providing the funding our team needs to dedicate our resources to scoping and implementing our global expansion plan. We also hope to build connections with investors and grantors to progress our fundraising strategy.

We need to better understand the education ecosystems of our target markets and leverage international networks to get our brand and recognition of our services and impact out there. While we have great reach and market penetration in Australia, we require new networks to achieve similar results abroad. 

We would benefit from support to enhance our Information Technology capacity and bring some of the skills we currently outsource in house. This is required to meet the increased demand for our services and ensure we continue to exceed teacher, parent and student expectations. 

Gaining access to individuals that understand the education landscape in our target markets would be extremely beneficial. Our goal is to understand the curriculum and how the curriculum is managed from a governmental perspective.

We would like to partner with organisations that have an in-depth understanding of the local curriculum and the educational needs of their populations. This could be schools, universities, governing bodies, other NGOs or individual teachers.  

We are looking to partner with Philanthropic Organisations in the USA, India and the UK.

Our solution is digital, and we would very much love to partner with an organisation that is working to reduce technology access issues such as internet access and access to the hardware so that we can provide the education resources and they could improve access.