Instill Education

Transforming teaching, learning and leadership in every African classroom.

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will account for two-thirds, or 6.2 million, of the new teachers needed globally by 2030. The expanding school-age population will exacerbate this growing demand: for every 100 primary school students in 2012, there will be 147 children in 2030. The reality is that countries in the SSA will have to fill almost four million existing teaching positions by 2030, as well as create and fill 2.2 million new ones. Adding more space at established teacher training institutions (TTI) will not achieve this target, nor will it engender much-needed improvements in student learning and skill-development. Current pedagogies emphasise theoretical understanding of best practices, and not the practical, field-tested skills that today’s teachers actually need in order succeed in today’s classrooms. TTIs also fail to attract high quality applicants, deepening challenges associated with teacher training and increasing costs associated with retraining and attrition. For existing teachers the situation is dire. Most receive little support through their career; those who receive professional development experience traditional, workshop-based professional development; even though research shows it is ineffective. 

By combining global best practice in teacher training with cutting-edge leadership development, technological infrastructure, and professional support, Instill Education will overcome these issues and transform leadership, teaching and learning in every African classroom. Through blended, practical and rigorous programmes, our teachers will not only master the theory but also the craft of teaching and emerge prepared to contribute as leaders of the education system on the continent. Our teachers will shape the critical skills that can keep Africa’s youth globally competitive in the twenty-first century.

Our offering is built on six core pillars:

(1) Demand-led: We build for the needs of both public and private schools to guarantee our students are ready for the classroom. We enable aspiring teachers to get real classroom experience in schools, and qualified teachers to gain practical skills that improve teaching and learning. 

(2) Deeply practical: We provide teacher-trainees with authentic practical learning experiences through simulations that are baked into our delivery model. 

(3) Evidence driven methods: Our learning methodologies are built on evidence from the best teaching institutions in the world and contextualized for the needs of (South) African classrooms. 

(4) Affordable and Scalable: We build for affordability and scalability, Our blended approach leverages technology where it is most effective (enabling understanding of new concepts, seeing demonstrations) and focusing our faculty time on practice and simulations. 

(5) Partnership (African and Global): We have built content partnerships with world innovators in teacher education and have a diverse array of advisors from across the continent and the globe. Our partners included the Relay Graduate School of Education and Sposato Graduate School of Education; two of the leading teacher training institutions in the world. 

(6) Independently accredited: We will be one of the few independently accredited higher education institutions focused on teacher education in Africa. This will enable us to demonstrate what outstanding teacher training looks like at an affordable price point. 

Our approach is simply the application of global best practice in teacher development, andragogy, technology and evaluation to a continent-wide issue. We bring together tried and tested methodologies to create flexible delivery models for teachers in the broad range of contexts found on the continent. We are building both pre and in-service programmes to ensure that teachers receive career long support, and demonstrating the impact of effective, affordable training methodologies. We are yet to find another institution that is designing for scalability and sustainability in the accredited higher education space, and few that are delivering measurable outcomes through in-service training. 

We use a mobile friendly learning management system that enables all teachers to access bite-sized modules on demand, and an integrated data management system that allows us to track and analyse multiple metrics quickly and effectively. Online modules can be taken both as part of a blended learning model or as a stand-alone intervention, and focus on helping teachers to understand the core principles, access relevant videos, and synthesise content through targeted questioning, giving us crucial data on teacher progress and performance. Data from these platforms is shared with teachers and school partners, ensuring transparency and data informed decision making. 

We have two goals - to build a sustainable in-service business and prepare for launch of our first campus. We are currently awaiting accreditation from the South African government as a private higher education institution - a complex process from which we have gained much valuable learning that will later be applied across the continent. 

A sustainable in-service training business will enable us to continue learning and growing between now and the moment accreditation comes through. This will involve building our content library, productising (i.e. standardising) each module, and working out how to access schools and diverse sources of financing. 

1. Secure accreditation in SA, launch a network of campuses and distance programmes. 

2. Build out our range of degree programmes to include PGCE, B.Ed and Diplomas for teachers and school leaders.

3. Submit accreditation applications in 10 new geographies in Africa; secure accreditation and launch campuses in 3 countries beyond SA. 

4. Design, pilot and roll out a delivery model that creates measurable outcomes for teachers in rural as well as urban areas.

5. Create a profitable pre-service and sustainable in-service business that enable equitable access to high quality teacher education.

We currently work directly with schools to design and deliver programmes. Reach is achieved through a combination of face-to-face, blended and online only interventions. Retention is achieved through constantly adding to our content library, reviewing and updating existing modules, and providing ongoing capacitation programmes to instructional leaders. We will charge an ongoing license fee for access to content and value-add services. All of this is underpinned by data which we collect and share with them, revealing further areas for development in their teachers and demonstrating our ongoing value. 

~350 teachers and teacher-interns (trainee teachers who are yet to qualify). We serve them through our blended programmes (online and face to face), personalised observations and feedback sessions, whole school diagnostics, programme design, and data collection, analysis and management. We deliver highly practical teacher training content that directly impacts teacher performance in the classroom, and measure this impact using a variety of metrics, but primarily through rubrics that align with our content. 

We expect to be supporting up to 1000 teachers over the next 12 months, both through our existing programmes (online and blended) and a new model of teacher support that we are currently piloting. This model would involve training trainers to deliver our content, enabling us to leverage our existing course catalogue and greatly increase the scale of our impact. The target group will include both our current target group of public school teachers in South Africa, new audiences in low-fee private schools, and a network of teachers in Nigerian public schools.

Our founding team comprises classroom (Teach First and Teach for America), teacher development (Relay GSE), non-profit management (Harambee, Business Bridge), higher education (African Leadership University), entrepreneurial (Instill, Business Bridge, ALU) and consulting (McKinsey) experience that enables us to bring significant expertise to many start-up challenges. 

Specifically, two founders have started previous education organisations on the continent, and the third worked in a start-up graduate school of education developing a campus for 3 years. This spread of experience makes our founding team an attractive proposition to investors and world class educators looking to join an initiative tackling huge challenges. 

Our current revenue model is a combination of grant funding (for public and non-profit schools) and revenue generated from programmes delivered in private schools. We believe that our in-service business can become at least self-sustaining through these two revenue streams, if not profitable. Once we are an accredited private higher education institution, we will become profitable through student fees. Given the importance of in-service training and the lack of current provision for teachers across the African continent, we will consider cross subsidising our in-service programmes with profit generated from the pre-service institution. 

We believe that we have a unique skill set within our founding team to succeed in tackling the teaching crisis in Africa. However, we are trying to solve a problem that has confounded many brilliant people, and wish to be challenged, questioned and pushed by some of the brightest minds in the world. We are looking for mentorship and advice on how to navigate the many hurdles that we currently face, and continue pushing to achieve our vision of transforming teaching, learning and leadership in every African classroom. 

• There are few organisations on the continent tackling the issues of higher education for teachers. Learning from peers and experienced business leaders would be transformational. 
• Our learning management system is currently fit-for-purpose, but to achieve our vision will have to be significantly improved. Learning how to build (or repurpose and existing system) will be crucial to our success. 
• Access to finance and support to understand different financing models could allow us to deliver our programmes at lower cost, and drive increase the equity in who we are able to train.