The Lesson

The Lesson is a cloud-based academic portal incorporating all the Ugandan national curriculum subjects for primary and secondary education in video format to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all Ugandans.

Problem: In Uganda, there are inadequate learning resources for homeschooling and the cost of attaining education is not affordable by the majority, this makes it difficult for parents to take their children to good schools and impossible to learn from home.

Solution: We have partnered with qualified teachers from different Ugandan schools to disseminate their knowledge through recorded video lessons. The teachers make lesson plans with guidance from the national curriculum of primary and secondary education, we record these teachers as they teach in chronological order, and then we upload and organize them on our cloud portal where learners can access them.

WIth The lesson, children will have access to cheaper education.

In Uganda, over 12 million students (both primary and secondary) could not learn from home during and after COVID-19 lockdown, this is because there are inadequate learning resources for homeschooling, income levels of Ugandans have gone low, an average Ugandan school pays UGX 500,000 per term as tuition only, the cost of attaining education is not affordable by the majority, this makes it difficult for parents to take their children to good schools and impossible to learn from home. As a result, children have started to divert from education and getting married at an early age. An average school in Uganda has 700 students and 25 teaching staff members, the students find it difficult to consult the teachers on concepts that they did not grasp in class, this in the long run negatively affects the performance of the student.

The Lesson is a cloud-based academic portal incorporating all the Ugandan national curriculum subjects for primary and secondary education in video format to improve the quality and delivery of general education to students. We would like to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all Ugandans.

At The Lesson, we have partnered with qualified teachers from different Ugandan schools to disseminate their knowledge through recorded video lessons and notes to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all Ugandans. The teachers make lesson plans with guidance from the national curriculum of primary and secondary education, we record these teachers as they teach those lessons in chronological order, and then we upload and organize them on our cloud portal. Students subscribe at UGX 1,000 per day to access these lessons at their convenience. If a student has a question, they can ask the teacher through the same portal as they are watching the lessons, the teacher receives the questions through email and then responds to the student. 

Currently, students that are learning from this platform are attached to the schools where they will do the final exam, so they use this as revision material.

The Lesson targets school-going children between 6 to 19 years, an age bracket for students in primary and secondary. These are people with fresh brains and need education. Currently, Ugandan Televisions randomly broadcast live lessons and some teachers also do live classrooms on zoom, these have not been reliable to students because of uncertainties like electricity shortage and disconnections. The lesson presents these recoded learning materials at the student's convenience, that was they are able to understand what is being taught.

During the process of building this content, we continue to engage the parents of these children on different ways we can improve our content to meet the national standards of education that would easily make the children understand.

When we finish making this content, we shall then be updating the learning guides so that the students can only learn what is relevant according to the curriculum then.

We intent to create remote interaction rooms where these students have discussions with each other to improve on understanding

The Lesson recorded content provides learning convenience to the student because they can access these lessons at any time they would like as long as they have an internet connection. The student always has a reference to revision if they did not understand a concept in class, students can still access fellow students and the teachers remotely and ask them questions for better understand, this will improve the quality of education and reduce the cost at which Ugandans access education because we are creating more home learning materials and bringing them to the students at their convenience.

The lesson is being tested with 100 students around Kampala, we are a young company (Shule Technologies Limited) trying to gain traction. We are still building/recording lessons as we test our business model with these students

The conversion of the entire national education curriculum for primary and secondary to video is a great innovation that will provide inclusive and equitable long-life education for all Ugandans at a relatively affordable cost (UGX 1,000 per day). The classroom is being brought home at a student's convenience.

We are currently serving 109 students, and in the next one year we are looking at serving 500,000 students, In 5 years we shall be serving more than 3,000,000 students, This is because with time we go on adding more content that attracts more students in different classes

In the processes of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,  we measure our impact according to the content that we have on the platform, and how geographically wide we communicate to the public about this idea. as we continue covering more topics, more people increasingly subscribe to the lessons

Full-time staff : 3

Part-time staff: 12

Contractors: 0

Classroom Teachers: We have got 10 qualified and certified classroom teachers. These men and women organize lesson plans and then provide the learning video lessons.

Technical team:  We have got one software programmer. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Makerere University. he developed and maintains all the company's technical work. He is also responsible for organizing the content on the platform. We also have two people in video production, a girl and a boy. these ones ensure quality video production from the recording room to the portal.

We have got one social scientist, who interacts with parents and other stakeholders to help us get more information about their needs towards this solution.

We have got one accountant, he is responsible for all the finance work of the company.

Diversity: We partner with all genders and kinds of people with the qualifications that we need, we hire both male and female staff as long as one is capable of doing or learning what is required of them. We also provide a training ground for those that are not well versed, e.g. the video editor and the camera girl. This creates confidence in our team.

Equity: All our partners under specific departments are offered equal benefits. e.g. if we are giving a food allowance or wage, then all of them are entitled to it with equal amounts.

Inclusion: All our teachers have a UGX 200 lifetime benefit per the first video viewed on a particular subscription, this makes them work wholeheartedly because it creates a feeling that they are also part of this Idea.

Funding: We are applying so that we can receive a grant to make us able to facilitate our teachers that provide the content we would like to provide to the learners of primary and secondary.

Publicty: We are applying so that our Idea can get exposed to the world, this way people will know about it and make use of it. this would reduce our budget for advertisement.

Knowledge: We hope to access mentorship, coaching, and strategic advice from experts, as well as the Solve and MIT networks. This will equip us with more skills and knowledge to improve our idea.

Financial: We need support in terms of managing finances, filing returns, and mitigating over expenditure.

Legal or Regulatory Matters: We need SOLVE to support us in terms of regulations because we are most likely to face a big force of opposition from owners of private schools who charge highly yet we do not have any lawyers to defend us.

Public Relations and Product / Service Distribution: We need help in terms of publicity and marketing so that we can cover a wide market.

We would like to partner with;

1. General Motors

We expect these partnerships to provide money to facilitate our teachers.

We do offer educational content to primary and secondary education in Uganda, this content is tailored to the Ugandan National curriculum. We shall use this money to facilitate the teachers that provide these lessons.