What is the name of your organization?
Social AI
What is the name of your solution?
Equitable K12 English with AI
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Closing the K12 opportunity gap created by standardized English proficiency testing in Japan through play-based learning with responsible AI
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Tokyo, Japan
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
JPN
What type of organization is your solution team?
Other, including part of a larger organization (please explain below)
If you selected Other, please explain here.
We are not yet registered as any organization, but are in process of incorporating as a for-profit company to deliver impact at scale.
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
In Japan, there is a growing opportunity gap between students who can pass standardized English speaking tests and those without resources to prepare. This affects around 12 million K12 students, especially those in rural areas and from low-income households, with similar trends in other non-native English speaking countries.
In 2024, 50% of K12 students graduated below government English proficiency targets, and 88% of students performing below the national average come from Japan’s rural areas. Failing to pass standardized English tests has real financial consequences. Due to Japan’s “Public School Choice System”, which allows out-of-district enrollment based on academic merit, a passing English test score can determine whether a student gains admission to a top-tier public high school. This opportunity gap is also present at the university level, with over 60% of Japanese universities requiring a standardized English test score.
This system places a disproportionate burden on lower-income households, who struggle to afford supplementary learning materials, as well as the exam fees for multiple test retakes. From 2014 to 2024, the price of the EIKEN exam, administered to 3.8 million junior high and high school students, doubled while average household income rose only 14%, worsening the financial strain on these families.
What is your solution?
Our solution, Moshi AI, is a fun and child-safe AI English speaking app that aims to close the K12 opportunity gap created by standardized English proficiency testing. Moshi, Japanese for “Mock Exam”, offers unlimited English speaking test prep to give students the skills and confidence to pass major proficiency tests.
We leverage AI technology in 3 key ways:
1) Our AI Curriculum Designer can generate unlimited content that accurately matches the topic, structure, and difficulty of the test so students can practice as much as they need until they feel ready.
2) Our AI Test Examiner chatbot offers live speaking practice through a fun game-like app experience designed based on best practices for children’s well being in digital play. Our chatbot has built-in guardrails to ensure a safe and age-appropriate interaction with GPT, and we follow best practices for protecting children’s data privacy.
3) Our AI Speaking Assessment offers real-time feedback and individual study advice to help students improve.
Our research-based methodology is aligned to CEFR, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which allows for scalability to all major English proficiency tests.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Our solution is designed for K12 students from non-native English speaking countries, especially those who lack opportunities to speak English in their daily lives.
In Japan, native speakers co-teach as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) alongside Japanese teachers of English. Outside major cities, the number of ALTs in public schools is extremely limited. ALTs must rotate between all schools in the area, supporting as many as 20 classrooms. As a result, each class gets fewer than 4 hours per term to practice with an English speaker, and that time is divided between 30 to 40 students per class.
Current government interventions are neither scalable, nor accessible to all students. Tokyo Metropolitan Government has invested around $9M to provide private online English tutoring to all 191 of its public high schools. Despite the size of the investment, only students at 50 specially designated schools have regular access to these lessons. Students at the other 141 schools are limited to a total of 5 lessons per year.
By leveraging AI, we can provide unlimited speaking opportunities to students at scale and a much more cost-effective price point, making our solution affordable for not only high-income areas such as Tokyo, but also lower-income municipalities.
