Pass Papers ZA

Pass Papers is a user-friendly education mobile application that aims to provide inclusive access to education resources and information to students of all backgrounds in Southern Africa.

Pass Papers is a well arranged, simplified app that aims to bridge the gap of education inequality in Southern Africa and expanding across Africa in future, by providing learners with educational resources, study material, career guidelines and  information they require in the academic year in order to excel in their studies. As previous grade 12 learners, we understand the challenges through first hand experience during COVID-19. Our solution is simple, this is a social development enterprise which has the mission to improve learners results exponentially in different communities which face different challenges such as lacking access to data, resources, inefficient study material and poor infrastructure which compromises quality of education for most learners, which puts them at a disadvantage already. This is not their fault, but their circumstance, therefore  Pass Papers aims to evoke the potential of every learner by providing large accessibility to resources and information that are available to each and every learner from different community, which looks to achieve through a zero-rated mobile application, as many learners in Southern Africa do not have access to all study material, however every household has at least on smartphone per household.

Pass Papers ZA will be one of the solutions to combat the educational crisis faced in Africa by providing access to educational material to learners in rural/disadvantaged areas and communities. According to Stats SA In 2020

• At least 600000 matriculants were expected to write their final exams this on the full curriculum even though they missed two and a half months of contact learning.
• The right to quality education includes having a school where learners are safe to learn and have adequate infrastructure and facilities to do so, but research has shown that that this is not the reality.

 South Africa has one of the most unequal school systems in the world. Children in the top 200 schools(quintile 5 and 4)achieve more distinctions in mathematics than children in the next 6600 schools combined (quintile 1, 2 and 3)

- Out of 23471 public schools, (77%) have no library and  (72%)have no internet access.
- Over 1500 Schools were vandalised during lockdown.

All these factors already put majority of learners at a disadvantage of not having basic necessities such as running waters, lack of books etc which already puts them at a disadvantage of not having past papers.

The poorest disadvantaged schools continue to suffer, while well-off or schools with all the facilities reopen, only deepening inequality in both access to and quality of education which we see, as the first step that can be implemented to close that gap.

The target population for this solution is mainly high-school students in different communities across Southern Africa.

Pass Papers thrives to bridge the gap that disadvantaged learners face such as poor infrastructure, overworked and underqualified and overworked teachers and lack of learning material by making students lives easier and saving them time.

Adequate learning material is vital in education. For students to progress in their education, they need the latest textbooks and the funds to purchase workbooks, exercise books, readers, and core learning materials. These study aids all require money, which many students do not have, and with the lack of funding in the education system, many students cannot rely on the school to provide the necessary materials. And with the recent pandemic, we have seen the importance of adequate digital learning material and adapting to change.

Thus we believe this mobile application will supplement for most of the learning material that students do not have access to due to their financial backgrounds and circumstance.

Pass Papers app is founded by a group of previous high-school students, in particular grade 12 students of 2020, which have identified the challenges they faced first hand and used those experiences to identify needs and challenges most pupils face.

 Pass Papers has reached out and engaged with multiple foundations that have education and inclusivity at the forefront, as part of their core values and working in order to provide a solution to the problem, such as the Cyril Ramaphosa Education Trust.

Pass Papers is in the growth stages. A demo web-app has been developed and the mobile app is in its completion stages and have identified a number of schools to test the app.

Therefore the app is not in public forum but in the beta stage of its testing.

The user friendliness and the functionality of the app has been tested.

The links to the demo web-app are below:

Links to Website Demo App:
https://sites.google.com/view/passpapers-home/home 
https://sites.google.com/view/passpapers-subjects/subjects 
https://sites.google.com/view/passpapers-more/more 
https://sites.google.com/view/passpapers-about/about-us

Our mobile application currently runs as a web application, which is a cost effective in terms of development, and with a flexible compatibility regardless of which smartphone model or version the app is downloaded onto .A web application is convenient in today's society where internet connections are everywhere making our app easily accessible. The applications UI is user-friendly and easy to work around, making it convenient for users to find whatever they looking for quick and easy without fail. We have plans to upgrade our app into an offline mobile app to make our app work faster and able to be accessed whenever students are offline at anytime,  without the need to an internet connection. This would help students who do not often have internet connection and/ or for students who prefer to learn and study without mobile data or wifi, to prevent distractions from Social media. Offline learning is beneficial in the productivity of a students concentration period. 

Our solution has not launched yet , however the number of people that we look to serve this year after the pilot stage and the districts that we in contact with is roughly 25 000-30 000 students.

However in future we look to impact 100 000's of learners not only in South Africa but Southern Africa as a whole.

Our impact goals is to improve the lives of many students educationally exponentially, as well as their mental health, which is very important in terms of their academic performance.

Many students have lack of access to information, resources and education material, which Pass Papers aims to bridge the gap and provide access to these key factors.

Most importantly, we as an organisation will like to see an improvement in the pass rate and results of learners in the Southern Africa, especially disadvantaged communities and have more people searching their own career options by creating an environment of love and interest to the information available.

Stats from my Broadbrand and the Department of Basic Education show rural schools were affected more than their urban counterparts.

“Urban schools were able to continue with online learning [during the lockdown] which mitigated the loss in terms of school attendance, whereas those opportunities weren’t available for schools in rural areas. This is the gap that Pass Papers aims to close and allow for inclusivity and equal access.

Marches said in 2017, a total of 1 052 080 learners were enrolled in grade 10, yet only 409 906 learners passed matric (grade 12) last year.

This means only 38.9% of grade 10 learners actually wrote and passed matric. This is for the most part due to an extraordinarily high drop-out rate.

We aim to measure our impact goals by gathering data and information from the schools that we use as we pilot the app, as well as gathering data and information on learners performance/results before and after using the Pass Papers mobile app in order to see any improvements. Pass Papers will also make use of pop up surveys and Questionnaires on the Mobile application, different questions for different stages on the mobile app, which will depend on how long they have been using the app for, in order to constantly monitor how each learner is doing academically and how the platform is impacting them.

The SDG indicators that aligns with our solution includes SDG 4 of Quality Education which directly impacts SDG 1 & 8 of Poverty Reduction, it also directly impacts SDG 22 & 3 of Health and Nutrition as well as SDG 5 & 10 which cover equality and lastly SDG 17 Partnerships, as we believe through strategic partnerships this solution will be able to reach and impact as many lives as possible.

Therefore these indicators will measure our progress as we:

work to ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development and complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education

ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality primary and tertiary education.

eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education

The main barriers that exist and may hinder us to complete our goals this year include:

Coaching, mentorship and support

Financial support and resources, such as auditing as well as finances required for the pilot stage, remunerating people during our activations, maintenance of the app with the developer as well as keeping up with the operating costs.

Our staff has a wide range of abilities. Rinae is an intellectual student who is a critical thinker and a problem solver extraordinaire. He founded Africa's first digital musical marketing platform called Lalela Beats. He's a multi-talented entrepreneur with backgrounds in digital content creation, and project management. Leslie has extensive experience in web development and content creation, as well as graphic design and technological programming. He is also well-versed in the fields of social media and marketing. Karabo possesses a high level of financial literacy and has managed accounting software. She is a creative entrepreneur who has received distinction from the Delloit Young Entrepreneur Program, as well as an Allan Gray Orbis Foundation entrepreneurial fellow. Our solution is based on a situation/issue in our community with which we have firsthand experience and a thorough understanding. The solution emerged in 2020, when the Covid-19 epidemic struck, and we were in matric at the time. We had gone through the hardships of not being able to get an adequate education due to the virus's restrictions, as well as the typical stressors that come with being in matric. As a result, we act as representatives for individuals we serve since we are familiar with their needs. We will tackle both the issue of lack of access to adequate resources attributable to poor education systems in rural areas and the limitations of online learning as a result of Covid-19 with the solution of the educational mobile application. As a result, we've conducted extensive study to ensure that our solution would meet the needs of the servers. Our staff has in-depth experience and knowledge of the South African education sector and its systems, as well as a member who is well-versed in the technological components of our solution.

We currently do not have any formal parnerships. But we do have good connections to the heads of the school districs in our area who will assist us to expand our target reach to more schools.

Our solution supports of girls and women that are young mothers that need access to quality education content at home, due the  high rate of teenage pregnancy in this country and in Southern Africa as a region, this innovation will be a solution to more educational access for young mothers who have to learn from home in a mobile technology environment due to the unfortunate condition of teenage pregnancy being endemic in our society. Teen pregnancies in South Africa have increased by 60% since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in. In South Africa teenage pregnancy is the main reason why a lot of girls drop out of school due to lack of study materials outside the school environment. It is estimated that 3 out of 10 girls in South Africa miss school during their menstruation period, this due to many factors such as the lack of access to adequate toiletries and negative stigmas in society. Our app will allow the students who are unable to go to school but still get an education through the use of the notes available on the app. 

Pass Papers is an application made to aid students with study materials, information and content to help them prepare for their upcoming tests and exams. Which would be a usefull tool that schools can use distribute to their students as extra portable remedial help with quick access. The app caters for students from all social backgrounds. Helps with youth development as they now have free access to exclusive materials which would radically improve their performance in school as they gps score would increase, displaying values the The Pozen Social Innovation Prize mission to and I quote "..to recognize schools that consistently boost students' achievements through innovative models, programs and practices."