Team Taleem – Quality education for all

Pakistan has the world's second largest number of out-of-school-children and every second adult woman does not have literacy skills. The uneducated have limited access to economic opportunities, breeding non-functional members of society and leading to a perpetual cycle of poverty. This is an education emergency that needs to be addressed.

Team Taleem is an innovative, easy-to-use, and affordable educational technology platform which aims to create pattern breaking social change, using conventional methods to provide educational opportunities for those remaining out-of-school. 

The solution has an engaging gamified app, that works offline and is accessible anywhere, anytime on tablets. The structured and accelerated curriculum gives opportunity for self-paced learning and is supported by an LMS for monitoring and reporting.

With the flexibility to add subjects, locations, learners, languages and more Team Taleem has the potential to scale globally and enable families around the world to step into technology-led collaborative learning.

Pakistan has world’s second largest population of out-of-school children at the primary level with 22.8 million children aged 5-16 are out-of-school.   Even those who go to school often face ‘Learning Poverty'.  Almost half of government primary schools operate without quality teaching staff, electricity, drinking water, or boundary walls. At the current rate of enrolling children into schools, it will be 2076 before every Pakistani child is enrolled.

This was before 2020, the pandemic has resulted in the closure of approximately 10,000 public and private schools, effectively shrinking access to education for 3 million students and has disproportionately impacted low-cost private schools, as they were unable to transition to and adopt technology enabled education solutions.

To add to the challenge, Pakistan has an adult literacy rate of 57%, which is lower than Sri Lanka’s 92% and India’s 69%. Women literacy indicator are more dismal as every second adult woman does not have basic language literacy and numeracy skills and has limited educational opportunities.

As the poor continue to be left behind in education, they will be left behind in access to better economic opportunities as well. This cycle will continue to perpetuate and lead to increasing income inequality in the country.

Team Taleem is an innovative, easy-to-use, and affordable educational technology platform for out-of-school children and adults  Our objective is to ignite an educational revolution that helps the entire family step into technology-led collaborative learning.

The solution is innovative because the of the simplicity of the technology architecture used. It has five components 

•Engaging gamified app

•Learning kit with tablet, headphone, stylus and accessories

•Room with limited internet and electricity

•Structured and accelerated curriculum

•Learning Management System (LMS) with structured lesson plans and monitoring 

The customized digital work books are designed for teaching literacy and numeracy skills and they integrate with the learning management system seamlessly. The solution is a combination of short video lessons followed by digital worksheets to reinforce learning. The solution is gamified and works offline.

We have strived to make the app easy to use so that anyone who cannot 'read' is able to navigate the digital worksheets easily. The interactive user experience  is contextualized and supports the learner with audio instructions, and the gamified experience keep the learners engaged in self-learning.

The solutions is affordable and scalable as it costs about half of low fee school.

We want to help

• Out-of-school children without access to school and those who have missed the ‘school going age’
• Adult women who have not had any exposure to schools and need support with self-paced learning in personal learning spaces
• School-going children who need learning support as quality of instruction and instructor is suspect in their schools

Hence, we not only help learners but also those who run

• Schools for underprivileged
• Adult literacy centers
• Skills training centers 

Estimates also suggest that roughly 50 percent of the 50 million pre-pandemic student body has been lost due to the prolonged closure of schools. Post COVID, learning losses especially in the lower strata has become acute as they do not have access to utilities, connectivity and devices which deprives them of learning opportunities. They need solutions that work in their environment with least dependence on availability of teachers, stable high bandwidth internet and uninterrupted electricity.

Eventually we aim to provide a scalable solution for government to address the literacy challenge and educational emergency in Pakistan.

Team Taleem works best in  blended environments, learners group to use an engaging, gamified app for self paced learning. 

The digitized Urdu, English, and Mathematics courses are aligned with Pakistan's national curriculum. The contextualized and structured lesson plans facilitate independent learning.

Team Taleem app has special purpose digital workbooks that work in an offline mode on low cost tablets without active internet or electricity. Digital worksheets have extensive variety and enable hands on experiential learning.

The solution is scalable to add subjects, language of instruction, locations and learners. It supports teachers with pedagogy and monitors learning outcomes with extensive reporting.

We started piloting in Q4 2020, and have tested the learning app, LMS platform and field operations at 4 locations and 68 learners including 

Location 1 - Kiran Foundation

10 adult women who have completed the first term and started second term.

Location 2 - Bond School

15 out-of-school-children are in progress of first term.

Location 3 - Karachi Vocational Training Center

20 learners who are differently abled will begin first term in June 2021

Location 4 - Aga Khan Education Board

13 children who could not attend school because of COVID, will begin in June 2021

There are about 10 learners across the country, who have acquired the kits for homeschooling.

The pilots are either paid for by the partnering organization or sponsors, hence the business model is being tested. 

We have established procedures for onboarding partners, training supervisors, field operations and receiving local and international sponsorships.

The solution is designed to be disruptive to address the education emergency in Pakistan and other developing countries. It challenges the myths that:

• A full calendar year is needed for completing curriculum for each class
• Self learning for early education is not possible
• Technology is expensive

Key innovative approaches to break the myths include:

• The accelerated curriculum which provides the opportunity to complete KG – 2 in one calendar year.
• Micro lesson for self paced learning which are easy to repeat for reinforcement.
• Gamified engaging app with structured lesson plan.
• Quality lessons designed as videos and interactive worksheets, with instant feedback .
• Complex writing tool with instant feedback to ensure formations are learned correctly .
• Comprehensive coverage of curriculum  to minimize dependence on instructors.
• Use low cost tablets, used by multiple users in shifts with a life of 2-3 years which makes them economical to use.   
• Costs half of what parents pay for 3 calendar years in a ‘conventional’ school for fees, books, admission, exam and others. 
• Scalable architecture makes is economical to add courses, contextualize content and customize language of instruction.
• Extensive backend monitoring and reporting simplifies to add learners and groups,
• Designed for limited accessibility to electricity and internet which is either not available or too expensive for rural areas or urban slums where education disparity is increasing. 

Team Taleem is faster, better quality and cheaper compared to not only conventional schooling in Pakistan but other technology based solutions available as we strive for an education revolution.

Current people served

At the pilot stage we already have about 60+ learners on the platform who are at different stages of the program

Expected people to be served in one year

We expect to reach 2000 learners in one year

Expected people to be served in five years

We expect to reach 150,000 learners 

We measure the impact being created from solution based on the following key process indicators (KPIs) for short term and medium term outcomes.

Our staff includes the following:

Full time cofounders - 2

Full time staff - 2

Part time staff - 2

Contractors - 3

Technology partner staff - 5

We have third party service providers who support us for:

• Digital marketing services
• Legal services
• Accounting services

We are passionate and driven to create pattern breaking social change, using unconventional methods to provide educational opportunity for children and adult remaining out of school. We have extensive experience of solving real world complex problems.

The Co-Founders are accomplished senior corporate-employees turned social entrepreneurs. We have over 4 decades of combined experience working with Big-4 and bluechip organizations. We have multi-discipline expertise: organizational development, training, corporate engagement, technology, business transformation. 

Sadia Junaid, Co-Founder, is an experienced HR professional worked extensively on HR Technology and Organizational development. 

Zainab Hameed, Co-Founder, is an experienced IT professional who has worked in Technology, Innovation and business transformation.

We have worked extensively in implementing programs and solutions in all parts of the country interacting with teams and individuals of varying educational and social backgrounds. 

The lead educationist, Ismat Khan, in the team  is an Early Education Specialist who is an experienced  of 20+ years in early education, CARE (Centre of Assessment and Remedial Education), READ (Remedial Education and Assessment of Dyslexia), Teachers’ Resource Centre. She has worked for in curriculum development previously also and had done courses for digital teaching. 

The problem we are trying to solve is very complex, and we took the challenge to solve this as we strongly believe that we have the expertise and experience to find pattern breaking solution. 

We are a team that dreams to impact lives and bring social change. 

We embody the values of diversity, equity and inclusion in our organization. Our leadership team is led by women and we are an equal opportunity employer and hire based on competence. 

We have capitalized on all local skills and resources and have worked extensively with business partners and freelancers from local communities.

We have a flat organization structure and encourage inclusive planning and decision making.

As we encourage people with different backgrounds to join our organization, we have been working remotely since inception and provide flexibility to our teams so that they can create a balance work life structure. 

Our expertise and experience gave us the courage to start the mission of Team Taleem and now we testing product market fit. At this stage we know that joining a program like MIT Solve would enable us to remove current barriers to growth.

Running a social enterprise is new for us and  Solver community will  help us connect with leaders who have worked in impact driven initiatives, for support and also inspiration. The Solver network also has a global community which will provide us opportunity to network with peers in innovative solution for similar or other areas for synergies.

We are currently bootstrapping and have proven that the business model is working. To move into the growth stage and scale rapidly we need grants, which are offered by the challenge and its partners. 

Moving forward we also foresee challenges which could be best addressed if we have access to mentorship and coaching from experts in Solver network. This  would include expert advise on monitoring and evaluation support to build an impact measurement practice. We do not have expertise in this and this would really help us evaluate our solution, make the changes required and pivot if needed.

Solver will also help us in PR and marketing by give us exposure in the media, conferences and other communities.

We believe that our solution is scalable to international communities with similar challenges and Solve and MIT network will boost our standing and  exposure to partners to help us accelerate the impact.

We need partners or support in the following areas:

Business model  and Product / Service Distribution 

With an MVP in pilot phase and have acquired our first 4 community partners, who have believed in the innovative solution and have not only invested their time but also given physical spaces to conduct blended learning sessions. Some have also paid for subscription and based on their experience some of them are at a stage where they want to expand their learner base.

To grow we need support to acquire more community partners and others who are working for education of low income families. For this we need guidance for developing the growth strategy and introduction to networks who would have potential partners.

Public Relations 

We have worked on the initial marketing strategy and social media strategy but further guidance in this will help us to develop a robust content strategy to be able to communicate effectively with beneficiaries, partners, enablers, funders and advocates.

Monitoring & Evaluation 

The success of the platform is dependent on the learning outcomes achieved using it. The support required is two pronged:

• Guidance to design a framework of KPIs to measure learning outcomes for self learning platform and then to effectively measure the KPIs.
• Funds to hire professional, independent consultants who can perform the monitoring and evaluation.

Technology 

We are using Moodle LMS and there are limited qualified resources locally. As we grow, we will need Moodle experts to help us to configure and/or develop the required features.

 Some of the potential partners who could help us amplify our impact, some of whom are from the MIT Solve network including partners and members

Content Partners

Organizations who are working in early or STEM education, and are focused on developed tech-driven courses for under resourced communities. They would include partners like:

• Code Nation
• Educate Girls (EG)

Market Access Partners

We want to partner with organizations that have access to under privileged communities and focus on out of school children and uneducated adult women. From the MIT Solve Network, they would include partners like:

• Rural Support Programs 
• Save the Children
• Educate Girls (EG)
• UNICEF

Hardware Partners

We need partner who can either provide the android tablets for the learning kits, or provide funds to acquire the tablets. They include partners like:

• Vodafone American Foundation
• Samsung
• Lenovo

Moodle partners

To meet our long term goals, we will need Moodle partners who can  provide technical knowledge and development support to enhance the platform.

GM prize for dedicated for STEM education will help us extend our learning experiences. We have a platform which is scalable and has a gamified, easy to use interface. Currently due to limited resources we have only been able to develop early learning courses for English, Urdu, and Maths. Our platform is scalable and the next set of courses we want to introduce is STEM courses. Additionally the platform is flexible to add native languages of instructions and we intend to use that flexibility to instill learning of STEM subjects from the early years. This in itself will be a game changer for developing countries like Pakistan, who need a STEM enabled workforce to sustain economically.

The GM prize will help add STEM courses to our platform and make STEM education more accessible and equitable. 

Our solution is the only technology focused solution in Pakistan that focuses on adult literacy. We have about 49% of women in Pakistan  who are not literate and they do not have access to education. 

Education is the first step to improve quality of life for women and girls, and has a direct impact on the families they nurture.

Adult women have limited opportunity of early education and even if they do, they feel ashamed to attend conventional early education classes. There is a cultural stigma attached to asking many questions and failing in public. 

We have successfully tried the solution with adult women and their insights show that they can learn at their individual pace, are able to remain engaged with the app and can repeat Team Taleem lessons without the embarrassment to ask again like in a conventional classroom. Also, they get more confident when they have their private learning space to get early education.

Hence, if we can get a grant to invest in hardware to enable more locations for women and girls we hope to create create a considerable impact to lives.