Tilli: Transforming Pre-K to 5

Tilli Kids Inc.

Tilli: Transforming Pre-K to 5

Tilli builds and measures 8 foundational cognitive and social-emotional skills by a child’s 10th birthday.

Sri Lanka

LKA

For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models

Research shows us that 1 in every 3 children born in the developing world don’t reach their full developmental potential; both in terms of their cognitive growth and their social-emotional skills. The ages of 0-10 is the most critical developmental window of a human being’s life - over 80% of a human’s brain development is done before the age of 10. This means that the early years are the most effective time to build foundational cognitive skills. However, while research in this space is robust and shows us exactly how to fix this issue, critical decisions we make about our children as parents and educators are still based on pure guesswork because we don't do a good job at measuring learning and growth in children. There are three pressing issues that Tilli is well-positioned to solve: a) Effectively measuring complex cognitive and social-emotional learning skills at scale b) The disconnect between developmental and learning science research and practice (teachers and parents) c) Lack of localised, culturally relevant, engaging learning experiences and materials for K-5 settings in South Asia.

Tilli is a comprehensive toolkit designed for PreK to Grade 5 classrooms, to help educators upskill and learners to build foundational skills across literacy, numeracy, and social-emotional learning skills. We do this by bringing together three powerful levers: The joy of play-based learning The power of behavioral sciences The precision of learning data. Our thesis is that the best conditions to build foundational skills in young learners are a) when we start early b) when teachers are continuously upskilled and c) when classroom and home environments are brought together, which is why Tilli has 3 core components: Teacher: Completes an 8-module teacher upskilling program and has access to a WhatsApp-based teaching assistant that automates paper grading, summarizes learning data about their class, and designs personalized classroom interventions. Learner: Go through a 36-week, play-based curriculum, 30 minutes every week, designed to build each foundational cognitive skill. Parents: Access Tilli’s parenting tool on WhatsApp to access learning outcomes data about their child and personalized, research-backed interventions in their local language. Tilli is now used by over 25,000 learners across 50+ schools and learning centers in South Asia and in 4 refugee schools in Jordan by September this year.

Tilli serve three core user groups: Teachers: South Asian PreK-5 teachers often lack robust pre-service training. Our solution provides a year-long, 8 module, comprehensive teacher upskilling program on learning sciences, developmental psychology, and neuroscience. Partner schools have now begun to replace ad hoc teacher training seminars and workshops with our program. Teachers also receive a complete teaching kit with all necessary materials, tools, and curricula and an AI-powered teaching assistant on Whatsapp that can save up to 14 hours of administrative work. Learners: After two years of research at Stanford, we deliver a 36-week, play-based curriculum that engages children for 30 minutes per week. Each intervention focuses on building 1-2 cognitive or SEL skills, following the Learn-Apply-Reflect-Measure process. According to Save the Children, 9 out of 10 students who complete one Tilli learning module show evidence of better self-regulation and anger management. Over 90% of classrooms see a significant reduction in behavioural complaints within 12 weeks. Parents: Parents access an AI-powered parenting tool on WhatsApp to receive easily understandable learning data about their child’s progress and personalised interventions to support learning at home (all in their local language!)