Edtech Insiders
Edtech Insiders
Announcing the Global EdTech Prize Winners — Live at the World Schools Summit in Abu Dhabi
This special EdTech Insiders episode, recorded live at the World Schools Summit in Abu Dhabi, spotlights the Global EdTech Prize winners and finalists sharing how they’re scaling impact across K–12 learning, teacher AI workflows, and digital skills worldwide.
💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Abwaab’s AI-driven grading and human coaching model.
- Brisk’s rapid global growth through workflow-embedded AI.
- Matific’s adaptive, game-based math learning.
- Arukay’s digital skills + SEL approach in LATAM.
- Dukes Education’s human-centered prep for an AI future.
✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:01:00] Rapelang Rabana on Imagine Learning's system-level impact.
[00:02:44] Hamdi Tabbaa on Abwaab’s AI assessment breakthroughs.
[00:08:51] Arman Jaffer on Brisk Teaching instructional coherence vision.
[00:21:05] Craig Shotland on Matific’s adaptive learning + localization.
[00:37:08] Marcelo Burbano & Ana Ricaurte on Arukay’s digital skills + SEL
[00:53:18] Aatif Hassan on Dukes Education character, resilience, and future-ready schools.
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[00:00:00] Lin: So I'm here with Craig, a winner of the major category. Any thoughts you wanna share?
[00:00:05] Craig Shotland: Yeah, just very grateful to be recognized by our peers and it's been an amazing, today's a lot of learning, a lot of collaboration, and yeah, an incredible time all around.
[00:00:14] Lin: Yay. That's great. Congratulations on today. Thank you so much.
So we're here with Brisk and Arman, who just won the new global ed tech prize for Startup Category. Armand, do you have any thoughts you wanna share?
[00:00:26] Arman Jaffer: Yeah, we're just so grateful at Brisk to be recognized, and I think it just speaks to how educators and schools can really transform classrooms by not being satisfied with the status quo.
So we're really grateful for this opportunity. There are over 10,000 EdTech startups, and to be named the number one is really an honor, and we're really excited.
[00:00:49] Lin: Congratulations once again. We're here with Rapelang who's just won the prize so he would love to hear any thoughts you have or any thank yous you would like to express.
[00:00:59] Rapelang Rabana: Wow. I had no idea that coming to the Global EdTech Prize and pitching in the nonprofit category would actually allow us to win. So I'm delighted to be going home with the award. I think it's a great affirmation of imagine's work and approach of being a system catalyst. And pulling all the pieces that are required to make EdTech work in low income countries.
From the research, the solar systems, the tablet types, working with governments, pulling in the philanthropic capital, working with teachers and parents, and to finally see it coming together like this and getting an award for it, I think is a great ion to our work.
[00:01:35] Lin: Congratulations once again. Thank you.
[00:01:43] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact to AI developments across early childhood K 12 higher ed and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech Insiders.
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Hope you enjoyed today's pod.
[00:02:22] Lin: Hi everyone. This is Lynn reporting from the World School Summit in Abu Dhabi. We're interviewing this year's finalists and winners for the Global EdTech Prize to capture what's next in EdTech across the world. I hope you enjoy the episode. So today we're here with Abwaab and would love to give you time to introduce yourself and also a little bit of what your product is.
[00:02:42] Hamdi Tabbaa: Yeah, of course. So my name is Hamdi Tabbaa. I'm the founder and CEO of Abwaab. We're an ed tech startup based in the Middle East, helping students advance and its Excel at school. We're operating mainly in six countries right now and we focus on the K 12 student base. As you know, the quality of public schooling is not the best in the region, and that leads to a big emergence of an afterschool tutoring industry.
And we see that by seeing parents spend up to 25, 30% of their household income on spending. So we come in to help students perform better at school and hopefully set them up for a better. Life.
[00:03:20] Lin: I think one thing you shared in your presentation that I thought was very interesting is how you combine AI as a new technology with the offline experience.
Could you share a little bit more about how once you got tutors in that retention really went up?
[00:03:32] Hamdi Tabbaa: Absolutely. And there are like a couple of interesting examples that I didn't even give at the pitch, which I can tell you about right now. But essentially the way the product works is, let's take a step back.
We realize that it's very difficult for a school student to have the incentivization on their own to learn. And the best analogies we give usually is a dietician, which you can look up like the best diet ever on Chat GPT. But if you don't have a dietician with, you're probably not gonna stick to it.
The same applies for like a gym. You can go to the best gym, but you most probably need the PT to help you stick to it. So we apply the same thing in the world of education where every student that subscribes with us is managed by an advisor throughout their course in the academic year. Now the challenge is how do you scale this?
And obviously now with the power of ai, we're able to do that. Here are a couple of examples. Today, students have lots of questions in their academic year to navigate like exams and stuff. And this is where like AI comes in based on their submissions of their exams, understanding their pain points, to answer questions that cater to their own specific requirements.
Another use of AI that we've built, um, in this experience is you can imagine we have like hundreds of thousands of students working with thousands of these academic advisors. And the one challenge we found is students want to prepare for their mock exams with hundreds of tests. And our product experience only offers multiple choice questions.
So what we did is we told students, you know what? We're gonna send you exams. Feel free to just write the answers on a piece of paper. Send them back to us and then our like teachers and subject matter experts will grade them. Okay. Until that number started to grow a lot and then we realized it's not sustainable to keep on doing that anymore.
And luckily with the last two years of advancement in global LLMs. We realize that we can actually live with the product around that. Mm-hmm. So our latest product at a lab also enables us to instantly grade open-ended questions where students respond to their exams. The mock exams basically have to prepare, and then we give them instant feedback.
What's interesting about that is we realized that governments are actually very interested in this product because they're grading exams at scale and it's costing them tens of millions of dollars. So now we're also piloting this new product as a spinoff with different governments in the region to help them start grading national exams at scale in a much more efficient way.
That also gives them a lot more insights because everything's digitized and ai, you can extract a lot of personalized insights of different students, different areas, different districts on how students are performing.
[00:06:14] Lin: I Could you speak a little bit too on like how you guys manage the risk of fully AI enabled assessments?
Because I imagine there could be like benefits of human assessment versus pure ai. How then do you put in the right guardrails, especially if it's rolled out at a government level?
[00:06:31] Hamdi Tabbaa: Don't see it as a risk as much as I see it as an opportunity. If we get to a world where it's fully AI assessments, that's great.
I don't think the human is needed in the assessment. As much as the human is needed in the teaching and the guidance of the student. Mm-hmm. From dealing with hundreds of thousands of students, we realize that if you're talking about like pure academics, AI can do a good part of the job, but then the human touch of stress, anxiety, managing yourself, preparing for the exam, prepar, getting ready for your schedule, all of that, that's where students create for that information.
[00:07:09] Lin: Interesting. And I think what's so interesting about your model is how you make sure that there's a cohort. And then there's a human guide who manages this cohort of 300 students. You mentioned just now that there's a goal to grow each cohort to maybe three to 600.
[00:07:24] Hamdi Tabbaa: Yeah.
[00:07:25] Lin: How then do you think about managing like quality of the cohort and the human interaction?
Yeah. But at the same time now being able to kind of expand access to so many people. Absolutely. People,
[00:07:34] Hamdi Tabbaa: absolutely. The way I look at it is for like teachers to become some sort of humanoids. So we are already like empowering our teachers with the right tools to help them, for example, review the student's performance based on a lot of data that we're gathering process through ai.
As well as, as I mentioned right now, instead of taking so much time to manually grade the exams, exams are automatically graded with ai. And then you have a summary that's just provided to the teacher on how the student is performing, as well as sometimes taking too much time, responding to certain academic questions that the students have where, where AI can jump in and take over, and then that leaves the room for the human teachers to do the more human side of things.
Mm-hmm. Which is like psychological support. Emotional support and things like that. And doing that will enable us to scale our core size, keeping the human touch when needed, but then like having the AI assistance at when possible. Oh,
[00:08:33] Lin: cool.
[00:08:33] Hamdi Tabbaa: Yeah.
[00:08:34] Lin: Thank you so much. Thank you. So we're here with Brisk Teaching, who's come on to EdTech Insiders a while ago.
Could you give us an update, I guess since 2024, I believe? Like what has changed with the product or like how has things been going since then?
[00:08:48] Arman Jaffer: Yeah, so when we last talked, Brisk was a seed stage startup. We had a couple hundred thousand users and since then. We've scaled really quickly and what's resonated with educators is that they often don't want yet another tool to use, and b Brisk's integration directly on top of the content.
The tools that you're already using has really resonated. And so we're about to hit 2 million users, primarily those in the us, so about one in four are actually using Brisk, which has been really phenomenal to see. I think for us, the next stage is really to build the next foundational level of instructional coherence.
We've done a lot of really great automations on top of teacher's workflow, but ultimately what really matters is the instructional cycle. And so our investment is gonna go into deepening our impact on these legacy categories such as learning management systems and curriculum and assessments. 'cause we think that's really where the change happens.
[00:09:42] Lin: Could you. Elaborate a little bit more on the instructional coherence part because I understand it's like a layover. Sure. So what is like the impact that you guys can do versus being like an LMS yourself? Sure. Yeah.
[00:09:53] Arman Jaffer: Yeah. So like, let's take an example. Mm-hmm. A lot of educators love giving feedback.
Mm-hmm. In Brisk because it really fits within their workflow. They can open up. Their LMS or Google or Microsoft or even an image of student work and instantly give feedback. Mm-hmm. And often when you follow, what a teacher does is they're not just giving feedback or grading assignments to provide a score.
They're also thinking about how do I adapt my instruction tomorrow to be able to address some of the needs that I'm noticing in the classroom? Mm-hmm. And for so long, the educator has had to be the only source of truth of how their class is doing. What we're seeing with Brisk is we take all this context on the feedback that we're generating on student work, the feedback that you agree with, and then we're creating next step recommendations based on that data to be able to say, this group of students need additional support with this topic.
Here's a reteach lesson plan that you can use in your next section to be able to kind of address that gap. Mm-hmm. And that's really what high quality teaching is. It's not about feedback in of itself, but it's that interconnectedness of planning and differentiation. And so what we're really excited about is to continue to build that connectivity within the product.
Last year we launched Boost, which is our student facing tool. And a lot of people treat student facing AI as an end in itself. But what we see it as part of this larger instructional cycle where not only is a student getting differentiated support through an AI tutor, for example, but that data is so valuable as a form of assessment, which helps the teacher then understand, here are the gaps in my class.
Here's what students are misunderstanding, because that's what they're asking for. Mm-hmm. And then we can use that data to power additional supports that we offer students. And so building that ecosystem is really what we're excited about.
[00:11:29] Lin: Amazing. I think since 2024 as well, one thing we've seen is a lot of change from the foundational models themselves.
There's more student uptake, but they seem to be entering education more aggressively. And I think. Maybe for Brisk as well, there's like AI browsers that potentially look like an overlay. I wonder how you've thought about kind of defensibility or the differentiator at this time.
[00:11:50] Arman Jaffer: I think we are so locked in on being able to drive outcomes for students.
Mm-hmm. And there are a lot of amazing AI products that I would say the Googles and the open ais and Philanthropics of the world are creating. And we're really excited that they're interested in this space. Ultimately, their focus is productivity primarily. And we think that our sole focus on how can we drive outcomes for your school, how can we see every student and deliver them the most world-class instructional experience is not something that they're really focused on, which is a great opportunity for us.
So we're, we are a Google partner, we're an open AI partner. We see them as collaborators in this broader vision of re-imagining school in a way. That can be able to drive outcomes.
[00:12:31] Lin: Mm-hmm. Amazing. One thing that I guess would love to dive deeper into, and you might have covered it a bit before in our previous podcast, is that it sits on top of existing teacher workflows.
And I'm sure there's a lot of like virality through teacher to teacher sharing. So I would love to understand a bit more in like risk go to market motion. Bottom up teacher's adoption versus what we see often, which is like the top down. Yeah. Enforcement from school or district level. And wonder how has that evolved as you guys have scaled so quickly?
[00:12:59] Arman Jaffer: I think often we find that teachers are our best advocates. They are often underserved by the tools that they use and risks. Maniacal focus on making the instructional experience for educators coherent has really helped us build advocates across almost every district in the United States. And so we continue to be propelled just by educators and students often raising their hands and saying, this is something that would be really valuable for my school.
That being said, as we've started to see AI be adopted across the board in every school, every district in the country, there's a level of systematization that I think is really important to take the next step. So AI isn't just being used on a one-off basis, but there is a theory of change that can actually drive outcomes.
And so. We're really excited as part of that motion to start working more closely with school districts to be able to implement a more instructional vision that speaks both to the Chief academic officer's vision for what high quality teaching looks like and is met with the benefits that risk can often provide to teachers and students as well.
[00:14:03] Lin: Mm-hmm. So I'd love to hear a bit more about Boost, actually. 'cause a lot of risk helps teachers like simplify their workflows. But yeah, student facing is this whole other ballgame. I'm sure it's
[00:14:14] Arman Jaffer: complicated for sure. So we launched Boost in the fall of 2024, and it was kind of in response to a shift that we had seen.
So when AI first came out onto the scene, there was a lot of focus on academic integrity. That was the primary way in which even K 12 teachers saw ai. And I think over the course of 2023 and 20, early 2024, we started to see a shift towards teachers using AI as a productivity tool. And that's when Brisk launch.
We're able to really scale with that value in the later part of 2024. What we were hearing from educators is I feel, you know, some educators, I'm not sure if it's a majority, would say, I feel comfortable with ai. I'm ready for, to introduce this to my students in a safe, thoughtful way that isn't antagonistic to my instructional goals in other places.
But that is directly aligned with, I want to do a check for understanding or an exit ticket about this topic. I think an AI chat bot might be able to be more dynamic in terms of asking the questions that are responsive to my students. And so we launched Boost in the fall of 2024. The one thing that's different about Brisk Boost versus other AI solutions is we don't think that these chatbots or these experiences that we're creating.
Should be completely separate from the content that the teacher is teaching. And so as a result, when you'll use Boost, we start from, again, the workflow of the teacher, but the content of the teacher. So whether it's a YouTube video, a slide presentation, a document mm-hmm. Or even an online textbook, you're starting from the content that you have.
So you can design a chat bot that's directly grounded in that content.
[00:15:46] Lin: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:46] Arman Jaffer: And the value there is that. Students are able to engage with high quality instructional material, but with scaffolds. Mm-hmm. And so often in the US there's this layering of MTSS tiers. And so tier two supports often mean a student who might not be able to engage with tier one material can basically engage with tier one material.
And so what we've found is that our AI tutors are really able to close that gap. So students still get rigorous content, but when they get stuck rather than getting blocked, they can use an AI scaffold to be able to engage with that material in the first place.
[00:16:18] Lin: Interesting. Have you seen from the data how students are interacting with the chat bot?
'cause I think one thing that a lot of. Concerns have been, is that cognitive offloading? Yeah. Um, rather than engaging critically. So curious about like student usage.
[00:16:33] Arman Jaffer: That's the scary part. Honestly, when we think about what instructional coherence means for us, it often comes down to this concept of productive struggle in students.
That actually students need to be challenged. That AI can in some ways shortcut the learning process. And so what we've designed Brisk to do is instead of answering the student's questions, it's to ask questions, back probing questions, to actually challenge them to say, you know, if you don't know this topic or you don't know where to start, what do you know about this topic?
So we can start at a foundation and then work, ask additional probing questions to get them to get their own understanding of the content. Mm-hmm. And that's much more powerful. And that's really where, instead of cognitive offloading, maybe the opposite is unloading. Mm-hmm. But it's putting that those questions back to the student in a way that helps them productively struggle.
Mm-hmm.
[00:17:21] Lin: One thing you've also mentioned just now is your global expansion and focus on Nina. I'm wondering why the Middle East and also why now, given there's still a lot of room for growth in the us
[00:17:33] Arman Jaffer: there's absolutely a lot of room for growth in the us. I think our fundamental vision is to provide instructional coherence and pedagogy of line instruction to students wherever they are.
Mm-hmm. And we've just gotten such a poll in the Middle East and North Africa region from schools and, and networks of schools that are excited about incorporating risk into their workflow. Mm-hmm. And fundamentally, I think that often US based ed tech can treat their solution like build solutions that are US centric.
And I think that is really harmful for the millions and of students that don't reside in the United States. Mm-hmm. And so what that means for us is a deep investment, both on the product side and also the go-to-market side to say what does the professional development look like for a school in Dubai or Saudi Arabia or Egypt?
And be able to, one, design a coherent professional development experience. To design a product that works in that region, and then also to be able to deliver outcomes that are of importance in that region as well.
[00:18:32] Lin: Mm-hmm. Has there been any emerging hypothesis around product localization? Because risk to me looks like it's pretty universal.
[00:18:40] Arman Jaffer: Yeah. But
[00:18:41] Lin: I wonder, of course on the ground it might look different.
[00:18:43] Arman Jaffer: I think the interesting nuance that I've found with British schools or schools that are not US based is that there's a real emphasis on what in the US we call standards internationally are often called curriculum. Because exams play a much larger role in internationally.
We find that our advantage, and the reason why so many international schools really love risk, is that we have all those standards already built in, but we need to do it with more fidelity to be able to reach more schools in ways that actually are aligned with their priorities. So I think we'll double down on our, on our strengths around curriculum alignment.
[00:19:16] Lin: Mm-hmm. Amazing. Have you seen any use difference in user behavior across at the 167 countries you cover?
[00:19:24] Arman Jaffer: I think more in internationally we're seeing a larger emphasis on academic integrity. So Brisk has a tool called inspect writing, which allows you to understand the process of student work rather than focusing on the product.
And that's been really valuable in the us but what we've seen internationally is that a lot of schools are assigning, you know, long research papers or essays, and they're looking to be able to understand whether students are using ai. And our inspect writing tool has really resonated internationally relative to in the US where I think there's more of a balance in, in solutions.
Mm-hmm.
[00:19:59] Lin: I guess to end it off, given AI has become such a huge trend within EdTech. What are you most excited about and also most worried about when you think of AI in the classroom moving forward?
[00:20:10] Arman Jaffer: I'll start with what I'm worried about. I think I'm worried about exactly what you talked about earlier, which is that cognitive offloading process.
Right? I think when you look at some of these general models, they are designed to be able to please the user, right? There's like a whole emphasis on almost their sycophantic in the sense that they want to make the user happy. And often when you think about learning, the goal is ultimately human flourishing, but the steps towards that need to be productive struggle, right?
And so the thing that I'm really excited about is that there is a lot of investment. There's a lot of companies like Risk that are solving that problem, which looks very different than the problem that Chat GBT or Gemini were designed to do.
[00:20:52] Lin: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:53] Arman Jaffer: Yeah.
[00:20:54] Lin: Awesome. Thank you so much. Our listeners who dunno.
Yeah. Well how would you explain what you do and like the product in the company?
[00:21:02] Craig Shotland: Yeah. So I'll come back to our vision again. Mm-hmm. To create the best mathematical experience for every student in every country. Mm-hmm. And that's led a lot to who we are today. So we're a K to nine mathematics education, technology company, um, AI driven.
But at the core we're a pedagogically led organization.
[00:21:24] Aatif Hassan: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:25] Craig Shotland: So we to. Math activities that map to the curriculum. That curriculum can be flexible wherever you're, it has game-based activities, so it could be giving a cookie to a monster on a conveyor belt and having springs with different mathematical numbers, which might teach addition and subtraction.
It could be counting to five, counting fish in the ocean, but then again with humor interaction. So we think we're pedagogically, rigorous, game based. Mm-hmm.
[00:21:57] Lin: And how do you see yourself being different from like a, and also how has that shifted been around before and I'm sure lot of like tech. Yeah,
[00:22:09] Craig Shotland: so I think if you look at the heart of Matific, we have two, what I would call unique selling.
The first is the highly engaging, pedagogically rigorous activities that we have. So if you compare a Matific activity that teaches something like number lines or negative numbers or whatever that concept be, to the vast majority of competitors out there, we feel like our core pedagogy is better than others.
And what that comes down to is the conceptual understanding, the critical thinking components, real world situations, intrinsic motivations. And ultimately you need to see that in practice. And so kids. Don't necessarily think they're learning math. They're playing a game to get a ball into a hole or a cookie to a monster, but they get that real time feedback of if the spring's too large, it goes beyond and they can see the impact of their choice.
If it's too small, it doesn't go on. We teach geometry and you've gotta tell a robot to turn around and if you turn too far, it falls off with, if you turn with two large numbers, you see it spinning around around. And so there's those moments of learning through real world play that I think. Teachers, kids so much more as opposed to rote learning or traditional, let's call it digitization of worksheets, which is essentially putting a worksheet online or putting a worksheet online and adding a carrot in a different color is a back.
So that would be the first area. And the second is our. Ability to truly localize the product. And that's from language. We're in over 50 languages around the world. Few more common languages, French, Portuguese, Spanish, English, Arabic to unique languages like Maori and New Zealand, or Punjabi, which we actually started with in Canada, but now it's obviously of significant demand in Pakistan.
And then mapping to specific curriculum. So we map to 400 curriculum around the world. We map to numerous textbooks around the world. So the ability for a teacher to teach in their language, in their curriculum against their textbook really enables us something to have a significant difference or differentiate with a lot of complaints.
[00:24:10] Lin: Mm-hmm. And have you guys also thought about the adaptive learning part? Because that's like the big thing, learning.
[00:24:16] Craig Shotland: So we've been doing an adaptive learning path for years. So we've got millions and millions of students around the globe. Yeah. And we've got a knowledge graph and students go on that journey of where are they now as we build a better picture of a student because every one of our activities is a formative assessment.
Yeah. We have a lot of data. We understand a student pretty much with a high degree of accuracy after about 10 activities, or if they've done a placement test or a summative assessment. And based on that, and based on the other pathways done by millions of students around the globe, we get a very good understanding of where the student's sort of proximal development is, how they can learn, how they can grow.
And what is the right next best activity for a student? Is a student struggling and needs something just to build up their engagement? When is the student potentially about a term? When does a student need something a little bit easier? When do we need to test their prerequisites? And depending on the location on the world, often students are two, three years behind the grade level.
Grade level. And unless you have an adaptive technology piece, that student will fall further and further behind, get disbelief. And we look to rebuild the student's confidence and find that right path back to successful.
[00:25:25] Lin: And when it comes to adaptive learning, I guess there's also that balance between keeping teachers in the And how does like work with the human teaching?
Yeah.
[00:25:34] Craig Shotland: Matific can work as a student led product and can work as a teacher led product. Okay. We have far more success when Matific is used as a teacher led product and embedded into the teaching methodology or framework of a national government, state government school, or wherever is ultimately putting theif in based on the nature of the market fund.
So the way in which that happens is teachers can inform Matific what is the particular curriculum outcome they want to achieve? What is the chapter of the tech book, or what is the math topic they looking to achieve, which is already
[00:26:10] Lin: mapped again? Which is
[00:26:11] Craig Shotland: all mapped based on their curriculum, based on their textbook or whatever that is.
The system will then look to align even on the student led path, the activities being taught to what the teacher is teaching in class. Now, that may be a requirement that we go back to prerequisites or prerequisites, depending on where they're, teachers can then monitor on a dashboard where every student is at in real time, playing in class at the moment, see who's struggling, who's done.
And that can be differentiated as well by groups. The other tool we've got, which is amazing, and if you ever get a chance to see this in action, is we've got a multiplayer component. Okay? So in a class of 30 kids, 20 kids, a teacher can choose an activity for the whole class to play together at the same time.
Okay? And we've overlaid a sort of multiplayer scoreboard where students can see how they're going in a lesson. So it could be fluency practice, which is multiplication. It could be a conceptual. Standing topic, but students will go through the activity and at the end it scores them and places them on a podium.
And those results can either be chosen to be shown or not shown by the teacher, depending on the view on competitive or us. And again, everywhere in the world has a different lens on that, but I think we have the ability to make teachers look like rock stars in the learning environment. So we give the teachers inspiration around pedagogy, we give the teachers a view on how to potentially teach a subject.
And the teachers could also even set work to the students and have practiced those activities with non-randomized questions. So they'll be able to seem like they know what's going on. So there's a lot of different ways we can do that
[00:27:48] Lin: uhhuh,
[00:27:49] Craig Shotland: but I think we help make teachers rock stars and kids fall in love with mathematics again,
[00:27:53] Lin: which is like the win-win.
Yes, exactly.
[00:27:56] Craig Shotland: If the teachers aren't on board for the journey and you aren't making their lives easier, then I think you've lost the battle already because the teachers are simply the central point of learning.
[00:28:07] Lin: And when it comes to that as well, one thing I'm curious about is the business model because.
So, so much of EdTech is at B2B or B two G. Yeah. But does this disconnect between like what you pitch versus teachers actually funding it useful? Yes. Versus students actually funding it useful? Yeah. So the end beneficiary so far removed from the purchasing power, and I wonder how much things about the sales, like
[00:28:30] Craig Shotland: Yeah, so we sell based on where we are in the world, as you said B two G.
Yeah. B2. B b2, b2c. Yeah. Or alternatively, we also have a direct to consumer model. Okay. I think one of the things that Matific does incredibly well, if you look at our product, if you look at what sets us apart from our competitors, is the fact we're an incredibly good as a pedagogically education tool, and we're an incredibly engaging P.
If we get our product in front of students, they will love to learn and they'll learn. Mm-hmm. We're fairly confident on both of those statements, so we often use the term internally, like who is our end customer? It's the student. Mm-hmm. And our product is around how do we deliver the best product to the student, but we have to take into account all stakeholders of the process.
We have to make love incredibly easy and simple for the teachers delivering them value. We have to make it incredibly. Capable in terms of informing the decision makers of the efficacy of the product, of visibility of the product as well. But ultimately it's can we motivate students and can we be effective in teaching students?
[00:29:35] Lin: And I guess that's how you maintain a lot of the engagement. Not, scam is a strong word, but a lot of EdTech sales I've seen is you convince the decision makers. Yeah. The teachers are so unhappy with
[00:29:47] Craig Shotland: what gets rolled out. Yeah. So it's interesting if you look at the, like, the engagement of our product over time, I think we do incredibly well with keeping students highly engaged, motivated and learning.
We like to think we're 90 to 95% great maths. Mm-hmm. And five to 10% gamification and motivation. Okay. So the focus is very much on maths. Okay. But it's finding that little bit of love and excitement and extrinsic motivation to help a student along on that journey of learning.
[00:30:17] Lin: And you mentioned you have different business models for like different regions.
Yeah. Where do you think are your strongest regions today and where do you see like a lot of growth for the company moving forward?
[00:30:26] Craig Shotland: Yeah. So at the moment, the Americas, uh, and it's interesting 'cause if you look the sort of the global south of South America and the first world of North America, both of those markets are progressing incredibly well for us.
Mm-hmm. I think the state of investment into education ed tech in South America is remarkable at the moment. There's a lot of investment coming in from NGOs. There's a lot of willingness on behalf of government, and I think there's a lot of belief and I think technically it's at a amazing state where education can give them an equal footing with the rest of the world.
So very bullish about Latin America. We're partnering as well in North America, so in the US we partner with Heinemann in Canada, we partner with Pearson, and what we are there is their digital maths experience maps their textbook. So we believe we are the best. That's what we focus on, and that's what we do really, really well.
Uhhuh. We're not textbook publishers, and so we partner with them. We don't necessarily have the resourcing to actively go into those markets. Solid partnership. A great market there.
[00:31:41] Lin: And I guess the big question that we all think about in ed tech now is like the general AI tutors. You're trying see how do you see them play against a specialized, that is a compliment.
And do you see any risk in general as like someone who's been EdTech for, so
[00:31:56] Craig Shotland: yeah, it's a very interesting, challenging decision and something with we grapple with. So at the moment we're using Gen AI as a tool to simplify and empower teachers, not with lesson plans at the moment, but we look to get teachers to interact with our app and we're releasing a WhatsApp module where they can just talk to WhatsApp, see other kids are doing assign work them.
And the idea is within two minutes or three minutes on the bus, on the train, on the way to school, they can get out an understanding of their students' mathematical capabilities or organize their lessons that are coming up. When it comes to leveraging gen AI for student, that's where I'm uncertain as to the speed in which that will become a viable pedagogical option.
Mm-hmm. Don't let perfection get in the way. Good enough where you have a fantastic teacher and where that teacher is able to intervene with the right way to explain a concept to help a student to unblock their process. Gen AI pedagogy, I don't believe is at that level yet. Mm-hmm. And those teachers, having the right conversation with the students, I feel will have a far greater impact than Gen ai having the, however, if you're looking at a, a classroom environment where a teacher may not be proficient in pedagogy, may not have had a good mathematical background, may not be even as good as the student they teaching, at what point is a pedagogical description, even if it's not perfect, the right approach.
And I think in a lot of those markets, and again, I'll, there's a lot of arguments, even maif that go on. I think it's better for the student to have, even if it's right, 85 or 90% of the time, a gen A response to help them on that journey.
[00:33:36] Lin: Yeah, no, that's a very nuance, yeah, sorry. It's, it's like we spend so much time
[00:33:40] Craig Shotland: debating internally about that, and I don't think there's a perfect answer and whatever the answer is today is gonna be different in two weeks time.
The rate of change is phenomenal at the moment.
[00:33:51] Lin: Overall outlook from your end is that Gen AI has the potential to close a lot of learning inequities globally. Absolutely.
[00:33:58] Craig Shotland: I think it's gonna help transform education around the world, especially if you look at the really. Impoverished disadvantaged communities.
I think it's gonna be gamechanging.
[00:34:10] Lin: Is there an area within like math ed tech or ed tech in general think has been very underlooked with all this new technology available? I think one thing that we've been hearing is that disruptions seems to be happening. So it's like AI ffy existing like workflows or lesson planning.
Yeah. But actually the technology can be very transformative and can do a lot for like neuro divergent children. Yeah. Increased accessibility. So wondering if you have any hot cakes on like an area that's under
[00:34:40] Craig Shotland: Where we're focusing at the moment is with particular simplifying things have teach. We'll see that.
Rapid transformation. There's a few areas of AI that I think are gonna help for us, the first being localization and translation. We've manually had to invest a lot in that translation, and it's expensive, I think, as the AI capabilities of understanding mathematical terms and context improve that will fast track.
Mm-hmm. That process. And ultimately one of our USPS will be demolished. And that's great. Everyone can then teach in every language. I think for assessment, rote learning skill and drill, the ability to create content for practice will dramatically improve pretty quickly. It's an interesting journey, but it's an interesting balance as well as too.
How willing you are to allow Gen AI to be teaching kids. There's also the privacy, security and other concerns that are coming on with data sovereignty and other things. So, but it'll happen. I believe it's just a matter of time.
[00:35:47] Lin: A quick point, as you mentioned, localization. Yes. Is it mostly translation or does the content itself change?
[00:35:53] Craig Shotland: Localization in terms language is one thing, and again, AI is star, but it has to be manual. Then there's localization in terms of numeric representation, different symbols for division, signs localization by curriculum, and then there's sort of contextualization as well, which is interesting. So if you're teaching maybe a child in rural Africa, they may not know what a pizza is.
Yeah. To date, that has been economically not viable to truly contextualize that full location. We do have it coming through in certain areas of the product. I think that's something where AI could also be a very useful tool to making things hyper relevant to students. If you've got an activity where you're counting soccer goals, soccer's probably not the best example because it's played everywhere.
But in India, for example, it may be cricket boundaries or something like that, and there's those small nuances that are just that little bit more contextualized, which again, can increase the engagement and I think drive the right outcomes in terms of that.
[00:36:54] Lin: Thank you so much. So today I'm here with Arukay , an AI powered learning system based out of Columbia.
Would you mind sharing a little bit about the background of Arukay and what you guys do?
[00:37:06] Marcelo Burbano: Yes. So Arukay was born in the innovation lab of Harvard. We both graduated from Harvard, and we decided that we wanted to change Latin America through digital skills and innovation. And through that questioning about what can we do, we created Arukay.
Arukay is
[00:37:27] Ana Ricaurte: a learning system for digital skills for schools that combines everything the school and teachers needs, curriculum, teacher training, digital platform reporting and analytics, and a digital platform in one place. And we have it in English and Spanish and Portuguese
[00:37:45] Lin: would love to hear a bit about how digital skills have transformed, given AI has like totally changed the landscape in the past two years.
[00:37:53] Marcelo Burbano: That is exactly the reason why we exist. So the reason why Arukay exists is because we needed to be able to provide schools with a turnkey solution. We are constantly changing our content to be aligned with what is relevant today. So for example, AI is something very important mm-hmm. That you can, you can tell her about.
There are, there are
[00:38:15] Ana Ricaurte: a lot of uncertainty in the school because they don't know how to. Actually implement on how to teach the student to use ai. What they know is the students at home, they are using GPT Gemini. So we created this framework to train the teacher how to implement or incorporate the use of ais in the classroom.
So the primary elementary, we don't advise to use AI given the level of development that the students have. But in, in middle and high school, we recommended the EDH. Mm-hmm. Indeed. Evaluate and co-create with ai. Mm-hmm. Our different programs, computer science fundamentals and digital robotics, personal finance design and digital marketing, block-based coding, script coding and digital citizenship.
Mm-hmm. So that's proven to be really successful because there is a need mm-hmm. In the schools. Mm-hmm. And I'll say
[00:39:12] Marcelo Burbano: something that is important there is that. Each school is different. Mm-hmm. So you cannot compare a school in Argentina with a school in Brazil or a school in Mexico, and you cannot compare schools that are premium school international with local affordable schools.
One of the things that we realized is that you needed to be extremely flexible to be able to be relevant for the schools. So at the beginning of the year, what we do is that we align the curriculum with the school, the school's reality, let's say, what are the teachers capable? What are their backgrounds?
What have been taught before to the students? And with 21 Factors, we create this learning path for the student of that school from first year to the last grade level. But you need to make sure that you are. Consistent with that reality.
[00:40:01] Lin: Mm-hmm. I think one really interesting thing you mentioned in your pitch as well is how computational thinking and a lot of these tech skills are linked to softer skills, like empathy.
[00:40:11] Marcelo Burbano: This is amazing. So like I love
[00:40:12] Ana Ricaurte: to hear, this is amazing because the bias is that if you teach. Technical skills. It's separated. It's totally separated from social emotional acquisitions of skills.
[00:40:24] Marcelo Burbano: We started discussing this because we saw it in our kids. Mm-hmm. Of course. We basically do what we pray in Arukay with our kids, and we realized that they were becoming an amazing adult and young adults.
Adults, and we said, you know what? We need to test this. Mm-hmm. We need to test and see in reality evidence that this is happening with our learning system. The reason is the methodology, how you're providing the content. So the reason behind. Our findings is that we teach using project-based learning, design thinking and AI readiness.
Mm-hmm. We wanted to test specifically empathy, and the reason was very simple. We believe that the world is lacking empathy stuff, like all the problems that we see in the countries around the world. We feel that it's because those leaders are not putting themselves in the shoes of others, and we really, really want the next generation.
To have more empathy. And one of the things that we did not only with this, is that we wanted to embed it in our learning system. A structure where you start thinking first on what exactly you want to teach in terms of social emotional learning. And from there you build that digital skills curriculum.
So the base and the core is social emotional learning. Mm-hmm. And from there you build the digital skills. That's something that we believe is revolutionary. Mm-hmm. Because is thinking that way. Mm-hmm. They're thinking about the subject areas and they're thinking, but if you really want to understand, you really want to push the most important skill to be.
It's social, emotional, and that has to be your core always.
[00:42:04] Lin: This is super fascinating and would love to give an example so that our listeners can imagine what this looks like in practice.
[00:42:11] Ana Ricaurte: So there are different type of empathy, design, empathy. When you design something, thinking about the end user. So our kids, we host the most important coding tournament in Latin America.
Mm-hmm. So the kids identify local programs from a school, from their community, from the cities where they live in, and they solve it with the skills they learn with. So design empathy in design, something according to the needs of the final user.
[00:42:42] Marcelo Burbano: 30,000 students participated in our last competition.
Mm-hmm.
[00:42:46] Ana Ricaurte: And there are other kind of empathy, cognitive empathy, which means be able to put. On your shoes. Yeah. And, and effective empathy. When you are capable of feel that I feel what you are feeling. So even that, our methodology design thinking, most of the time the student, the first iteration, they are gonna fail.
Right. You are not gonna come up with a mobile app right away. It's a process. Right. With effective empathy is when you fail and you feel sad. I'm able to feel the sadness that you're feeling.
[00:43:20] Lin: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:21] Ana Ricaurte: And we prove it.
[00:43:22] Lin: Interesting that
[00:43:23] Ana Ricaurte: you develop that uhhuh. That was really like satisfying and, and same time satisfying, satisfied.
[00:43:29] Lin: Amazing to hear. How have teachers reacted to this new solution?
[00:43:34] Marcelo Burbano: Yeah.
[00:43:34] Lin: Because I totally understand the SEL and like computational thinking feels like it exists in different worlds. How has it upskilling or like communicating of this value been to teachers and educators?
[00:43:45] Ana Ricaurte: Well, teachers love us. Mm-hmm.
Because the challenge of a technology curriculum is really difficult to keep up with ai. Right? So what we tell teachers at schools, no worry about it. We are the one that we are gonna solve for that problem.
[00:44:04] Marcelo Burbano: We are keeping all the time. Everything up to date, and we are launching new programs every year and teacher, at the end of the day, what they want is to be able to provide the best education possible to the students.
So one of the things that is very difficult for this type of solution is when you're a B2B, and this is something that the US and Europe also sometimes forget. In developing countries, you want support 24 7. Mm-hmm. You want to be able to be there. Mm-hmm. So I always make this comparison is if you think about how Uber was built.
Mm-hmm. And if you have ever interact with the support of Uber, that is something that is not what teachers want and require. They want support a person behind. And immediate support. Mm-hmm. So we build a WhatsApp system where they can be supported 24 7 and immediately supported as soon as they have any, need, any questions about either the platform, the content, or the methodology so they can, they can solve their issues right away.
And
[00:45:08] Ana Ricaurte: another thing is like 50% of the time of a teacher is devoted to admin tasks, tasks not related to the classroom. Mm-hmm. Time. So what we with wants is to give time to teachers and they can develop the relationship with the student. That one-on-one relation, that relation that I'm sure you remember a teacher that changed your life or impacted your life.
That's what, that's what we want. Because today teachers are overwhelmed. They are suffering from burnout. Now. Syndrome. Right. Especially in emerging countries, they have a ton of things to do. So Arukay provide everything. Curriculum. Mm-hmm. Teacher training rubrics. Mm-hmm. The guides. Constant training.
Constant training. Constant training. Unlimited training. So teacher really love us.
[00:46:00] Lin: You mentioned as the RI is aiming to be very scalable. How do you balance that with the constant teacher training that you need to provide? Because it sounds very hands-on. Not the opposite of what I would think of as ability.
Yes. So we have.
[00:46:13] Marcelo Burbano: Today serving 60,000 students. Mm-hmm. On a weekly basis on our platform and our system. And of course we have a thousand plus teachers that are being supported today. Today is a very, I'll say, hands-on support system. We are incorporating in the next version of our learning system that comes out at midyear next year will have AI agents supporting the teachers, so that will decrease the level of human support.
But increase the scalability. At the end of the day, we know that teachers will like to have human interaction and will have that available for them, but for the very simple support questions like, I forgot my password. Yeah, yeah. I forgot
[00:47:05] Ana Ricaurte: my, the 80% of the questions can be solved by an agent. Mm-hmm.
Because those are the questions. I forget my password. I don't know where this curriculum is. Can you provide when? When they need the human touch and iteration, they're gonna get it. Get it?
[00:47:21] Lin: Mm-hmm. Amazing. One more thing you mentioned about being scalable and also increasing access is around keeping it affordable and flexible.
How do you structure pricing for different schools, different students, and different countries? Especially when you think about how do you keep it accessible for lower resources like setting? Yes. It's
[00:47:40] Marcelo Burbano: extremely difficult to do it, but we have found a way. It's around. The level of service.
[00:47:46] Lin: Mm-hmm.
[00:47:46] Marcelo Burbano: Mm-hmm.
And the complexity of the content and system delivered. But we can go as low as $1 per month for public schools. Those are usually very large scale groups that have probably more than 20, 30,000 students. And we have of course, the flexibility to go and be extremely sophisticated for what an international premium school chain will need.
So you don't want to provide a very complex product for the public schools because the teachers don't want that. They want something simple, reliable, rigorous. We can provide that. But for the very sophisticated players, you want something very complex that they can really take advantage of.
[00:48:33] Ana Ricaurte: And regarding the pricing.
As we are incorporating agents, right? So our purpose is to keep the system affordable as possible because 80% of the students in Latin America belong to the public system.
[00:48:52] Lin: Mm-hmm.
[00:48:53] Ana Ricaurte: So we want to care for that.
[00:48:55] Lin: Mm-hmm.
[00:48:56] Ana Ricaurte: Many companies every year increase the price. No, we want the contract to keep the price because every time we are incorporating more technology in the background.
To take care of one of our principal that is affordable.
[00:49:10] Lin: Amazing to hear.
[00:49:12] Ana Ricaurte: Mm-hmm.
[00:49:12] Lin: To end things off, not everybody will be familiar with the context of Latin America, could you share like your biggest hopes for education in the region and also kind of what are the main gaps you see, like potentially AI can help solve moving forward?
[00:49:26] Ana Ricaurte: One of my wishes is like Latin America, every time there is a new administration, like a new president, a new party takes the administration of the country. They change same as Malaysia if you come to political game. So they, they don't have a plan for continuity, a continuity plan for the next hundred years.
Right. I know that our country and our region have many challenges in literacy and math, but the good thing about, you know, digital skills is combines everything, combines math, coding is all about math. It's in English. It's totally bilingual, so it's less leapfrog education because where we try to
[00:50:11] Marcelo Burbano: figure it out, math and literacy solve for the foundations.
[00:50:14] Ana Ricaurte: We have this digital gap learning gap that keeps enlarging, right? Yes. So that's my wish for Latin America. We need to take action right away. China, US has made mandatory AI education for schools. What happened with Latin America? We have to do the same because the competition is now global. The student that is graduating from Columbia is competing with the student that is graduating from China.
And the US, they are gonna have the skills while Latin America is not. And the beauty of is that it starts at first grade. Think about digital gender gap we're gonna solve as well for that. Think about AI readiness, think about math by English. So we want to solve it from
[00:51:05] Marcelo Burbano: first grade and, and we are positive.
So we're extremely positive. We think that, so for the region to be a participant in the digital world, our students, our next generation needs to be native in terms of the language of innovation. That is basically technology. So if you want to really change the world or change your society, or change your country or your city, you'll probably be tech based.
And to be able to be tech-based, you have to talk and write the language of technology. Okay? We know that this is a big challenge for Latin America. We know that parents, not all parents know this, but we know that the gatekeepers that are at the schools know it, and we know that we start. In first grade by year 12 or 14, depend the school you are gonna be ready such regardless if you go to higher ed or tertiary, this is very important because not everybody in Latin America will go to a tertiary education.
[00:52:03] Ana Ricaurte: I'm gonna give you a number that really crush my my heart. Like only 17% of students in Latin America goes to tertiary education. That's the important of the World School Summit. We have to take advantage of 12, 14 years that we have the students in our classroom. That's precious time. So when the students graduate, they have to have the digital skills, otherwise they're not gonna make it to higher ed.
And in Latin America, I guess it's similar to Malaysia, most of the students when graduate, they work straight to work as what kind of work. Right. So we want them to actually be higher with good, you know, compensations and to compete in the real digital economy.
[00:52:48] Lin: Amazing. Thank you so much.
[00:52:51] Ana Ricaurte: Thank you.
[00:52:53] Lin: So today we're here with Aatif from Dukes Education.
We'd love to hear a bit more about your background on how you started, Duke. We been hearing how before education, you were in the Army and then you were in finance. So these two worlds viewed very different from the classroom. We would love to hear what was the exact moment you decided that education was going to be the next chapter.
Next chapter.
[00:53:12] Aatif Hassan: Yeah. So I'm somewhat of a reluctant educator and perhaps the least qualified person to be doing what I'm doing in that I was at the age of 11, I failed my 11 plus exam, which is to go from primary school to senior school at 13. I was actually. Thrown Outta school. I was expelled and diagnosed with severe dyslexia and A DHD attention deficit disorder meant that I was in a educational system, which just didn't fit for me, but I was a lucky one.
I ended up going to a very small school, which nurtured my talents, met some extraordinary teachers, and I saw really the power of connection between teacher and pupil and a firsthand experience. I was also lucky. I had a incredible father and yeah, I had, was given opportunities in sport, in military and then they gave me the confidence to get a, a first class degree in mathematics and a career in the city in finance.
And I was lucky because the military gave me the work hard ethic and resilience, and the sport gave me a. Alongside the military are sort of teamship principles, which you really need to work with people in the Four Out. Last six years I was in the city. I was UK Health Investor of the Year, and then investing in healthcare companies.
And in 2012 I was Global Investor of the year. So I was actually reasonably good at what I was doing. And then a series of things happened, really. One, I think I was getting slightly lazy at work in the sense that I was getting slightly sort of arrogant and sense, but more importantly and personally a few years earlier, my eldest son had passed away.
So that was really probably the biggest tragedy that shaped my sort of existence and a profile on risk and profile on you understand without being too morbid about it, and you understand the value of a child's life better than anyone else. And then. Just before the company started, I guess that you asked for that moment, what was the big catalyst?
I was in a triple fatality car accident where four cars crashed together and I'm the only surviving member, so I was air ambulance out and when I gained consciousness, I basically decided I was gonna work with children and I'd worked with some charities previously and I'd enjoyed those. I sat on the board of Governors of a school I went to, and I really felt that kind of.
Yeah, a few things. One, when I looked at the education sector, I was struck by how little learning happened. I know we're at a learning conference and that's great that people here are learning, but teacher can qualify and just be left teaching for 40 years, and there was very little CPD continuous. Post development and you just think about where technology has moved in that time.
And it just bonkers that sort of teachers were still teaching having qualified many years ago. So that was the first thing. So we created a sort of in-house university in center of the organization. So if you're in our offices, you'll see when you go to most corporate offices, they look like an office and there could be any others.
You come into ours, we have classrooms, we have innovation labs, we've got theaters, and it looks like an educational hub. So that was the first sort of theme in which we did. The second was really that aspiration for a child. I felt that there was a fair bit of mediocrity and we kind of wanted to really dream big for these children to see what their possible, and I think entrepreneurship and innovation meant that you had the ability to experiment and you met Dr.
Ricky and everything from having. Immersive work experience in workplace. So we had partnerships, we had partnership workplaces to ed tech fueled college counseling to amazing sporting collaboration and we could do it at scale. So we've set about sort of building schools and buying schools initially in the UK and then across Europe.
So we're the fastest growing organization now in Europe. I think we're the biggest in the uk. Revenues are greater than $500 million. So that was sort of, uh, sort of the second thing was sort of this aspiration thing. And the third was really to ensure that. Children were put at the heart of what we did.
And it's so easy to sort of focus on returns and revenues and outcomes, which are not effective to children. And so we really shaped how we ran the organization by ensuring that everything revolved around the child. And when you start to make decisions like that, then you start, start make different longer term decisions.
So we really are trying to understand what a child needed to be ready for the 21st century. So we started building our own curriculums and the type of activities we get 'em involved in. I've already talked about work experience, but a higher level of debating, a higher level of engagement with sustainability and a sort of a series of projects that they're doing mean that they're basically being challenged and perhaps getting ready for a world of ai where I think you're gonna have to have a high level of humanness.
[00:57:47] Lin: Mm-hmm. And on that point as well, AI has been such a big theme of this conference and education in general. So for a deep student graduating maybe 10 years from now with so much uncertainty around like what skill sets we need, how are you preparing your students today for like the future, and what do you think are gaps in the systems that have actually missed?
[00:58:09] Aatif Hassan: Yeah, I think actually whilst interestingly, we look at the future and that's exciting and unknown and clearly. None of us have quite the crystal ball of the scale of what is possible. What is very clear is the status quo will change. Mm-hmm. And so therefore, you kind of have to work out in anything what is gonna change and what is gonna stay constant.
And the, the essence of a human being is gonna stay constant. And so we learn, I'm 46, so when I was at school, the real only measure was iq. As I went through schooling in college years and university, we learned about eq, the emotional quotient, you know, and we learned about sensitivity, how you could read things and how you interacted with humans.
And you could pick up those signs. And then the pandemic came along in COVID. And I thought, one thing we really learned was the essence of schooling, which was, it wasn't just to teach people in the classroom, was a whole social interaction. And oh, I called the sq, the social quo. And suddenly we realized actually your ability to influence inspire was perhaps even more important than perhaps IQ and eq.
And we realized that schools are just a place of socialization. So we know that whatever technology comes and whatever AI brings there is gonna be something which is gonna connect us as human beings. There's something truly fundamental in our spirit, which binds us and that, and so clearly AI will bring prosperity, efficiency, and a different way of working, but there's something that I suspect will keep us going as humans.
And so when you know that you have to sort of look at character traits and actually, so whilst I was gonna say we look forward actually what will be really interesting, we start to go back to 500 years or a thousand years and start to look at the wisdom of our past and start to read things like Aristotle, uh, his view of wisdom, whether platonic.
Values and virtues, or you look at Socratic dialogue in looking at the Greeks in these examples and how we interact with each other. You know, I think they're gonna tell us things which, uh, have stood the test of time. Mm-hmm. If you look at economics, you could read Adam Smith 1775 and Wealth of Nations, you know, about sort of internationalization and free markets.
And those principles still exist today. And so actually I think to go forward, we've gotta go backwards. Mm-hmm. And we have to really innately learn about what's human. And I think more important than perhaps iq, EQ and SQ is what I call BQ stability to bounce through life. It's the resilience quotient.
And I think to have resilience and bounce ability, you have to have a really strong character. And a strong character comes from having the traits I think that some of the classics will provide us. So actually learning to be human is gonna be the greatest skill we will do perhaps in the next 20 years.
[01:00:36] Lin: Amazing. Dukes Plus I know covers a lot of that too. Through your career placements. Yeah, through career counseling. So really trying to bridge the gap beyond higher education, but the whole ecosystem surrounding it. One thing you did mention is also that Dukes is kind of the largest in the UK and fastest growing in Europe.
Would love to understand kind of the growth logic behind your current portfolio. Like what are you looking for next,
[01:00:59] Aatif Hassan: Avery? Yeah, so when we first started, I live in London and the original thing was no more than two hours of my house. And that was really to embed the foundations of the organization and really ensure that we were grounded and have strong roots.
If you think about a tree, you know, longer the roots here and more we can do with it now. I think we've got really an embedded culture of values. If you came to our office, you'll see a genuine system and a philosophy that kind of defines us. And so over the last two years we've grown in Europe. Now the businesses, um, and the organization is equal 50 50 Europe versus uk.
And in the coming weeks and months you'll see us. We're keen to go over the pond into US and Canada and equally coming to this region where we are right now in the Middle East. So, mm-hmm We want to be global. We really believe we can provide our philosophy of education to as many people in the world as possible.
It's a very managed growth. So you can see from UK when it's Europe, Europe will go out and then we'll keep going and look, I've got another 20, 30, 30 years of this. This is a, this is a real passion project. Please start it. Yeah. To me, yeah. This is gonna define my legacy. So I think of organizations like humans.
Mm-hmm. And we are 10 years old as an organiz. We're actually celebrating our 10th birthday. So in what we've achieved in 10 years, if you think about a human, like a child has sort of got a bit of character, has got a bit about themselves, but it's still got a lot to learn. Mm-hmm. And I think as Dukes we were humble enough to recognize we've still got a lot to learn, but I'm excited by about the next 20 years.
[01:02:13] Lin: Amazing. We're looking forward to see you expand globally. And you just came out of a debate as well around. For-profit education. I know you've talked a lot about kind of giving back to your education, but how do you balance those concerns around educational purpose and financial returns?
[01:02:28] Aatif Hassan: Yeah, I'm a strong advocate for conscious capitalism.
Positive capitalism. I think there is a crying need for new facilities, more schools, great investment in technologies generally across the world. Teachers aren't paid enough, and I think there's a huge role that the private sector can play in, in bridging and providing capital to these sources. Now, there's a need for regulation, and that capital needs to be deployed in a positive and responsible way.
It needs to be ensured that it's long-term and achieves the ultimate game of actually improving people outcomes at the lowest possible cost, at which is accountable and clearly in the right way. But I don't believe it can be done by any other means, and we have to work hand in hand with the public sector, hand in hand with charities.
But I think the real rocket fuel comes from this conscious capitalism.
[01:03:21] Lin: Interesting take. That makes a lot of sense too. You mentioned working with public sector, but also nonprofits. I know you also chair, is it Caven Dish? Yeah. Foundation education where they focus a lot on dyslexia, learning differences.
We'd love to understand how that's become like such a big part of your work.
[01:03:37] Aatif Hassan: Yeah, I mean, it's an incredible brand in that it is one of the leading brands in inclusivity of a child. So despite your neurodiversity, whether it's you are primarily diagnosed with high functioning autism or dyslexia or some similar need, it's recognition that every child is equal and can learn in a.
Personalized way they can thrive. And I think it's a real opportunity for artificial intelligence and technology to really demonstrate its value in personalizing a child's journey. Now, in this case, Cavendish largely is a B two G business, so I, we get our revenue from the state and we can provide it a lower cost than the government themselves and the charities and with a better student outcome.
Mm-hmm. In terms of the value added, well, the point the child comes into, the child leaves actually does better than other schools. And so given we know now that one in 10 children across the world have additional learning needs, we know equally that one in three CEOs or self-made millionaires in the US stock exchange and US markets are dyslexic or have some sort of learning need.
You know, we have this ability to supercharge these young people and create the future, Steve Jobs of the world, basically. Mm-hmm.
[01:04:49] Lin: How do insights from Caven Dish feed into the mainstream deep school? Like is there an active sharing of r and d between the two organizations?
[01:04:56] Aatif Hassan: Well, we're based in the same training center on two sides of it.
They look after two different distinct markets. But yeah, I mean, it's driven by the same philosophy about serving children, and so there are huge opportunities of collaboration, not just. Between our two organizations, amongst many others. But you asked about question about charity and non-for-profits I think.
Well, we have our own charitable foundation called the Dukes Foundation, which we donate a portion of our profits and portion of our funding too, which allows, it becomes a grant making charit for other charities in education, but also provides a phenomenal number of bursaries and accessibility to children to attend Duke schools.
So that's the first thing. The second is, I think what we are able to do partnering with charities. So we have launched from our office something called Poetry Together. Mm-hmm. Which is to across government schools and across the nation is to promote poetry across the country. And Majesty the Queen who A Champions our initiative was in Wales opening a school to celebrate poetry together.
I'm on the board and fact co-founder of the Queen's Reading Room for Majesty the Queen, also whereby we promote reading and literacy. And I also sit on the board of something called the British Asian Trust. And one of its many aims is actually to give accessibility of the education in the Indian Pakistan Sri Lanka Bangladesh region.
So we are able to use our resources in our office, our funds to actually turbocharge these charities and, um, you know, feel very blessed and honest. We can do that and that's what responsible capitalism tools about. Really.
[01:06:21] Lin: Amazing. Is there a piece of the system you haven't touched yet that you would love to?
It seems like for-profit, non-for-profit across a
[01:06:28] Aatif Hassan: sector? No, I think there's really important recognition is you stay in your lane and when we look at, you know, there's a wonderful book called Good to Great and it looks at sort of companies which have over a long period of time and done very well. And there's, there's also a lot of research on centennial companies that have been top of the game for a hundred years.
And what they have developed is this notion of a level five leader. So can you detect ego? And you are really there for the purpose. So we are really trying to be as purpose as possible. Mm-hmm. And secondly, the other thing is they've got a huge amount of stability, but finally what they've done is they have stayed in their lane.
They haven't veered out. So there are so many exciting aspects of education to, to get involved in. I think they're better. Other people do it. We partner with them such as higher ed and universities. And I think what we would like to do is just more of the same, but across the wider geography.
[01:07:10] Lin: Amazing. So to close off, I think we'd love to have some quick fire questions
[01:07:15] Aatif Hassan: for you.
Yeah. Yeah.
[01:07:15] Lin: Is there one belief about education you've changed your mind about in the last five years?
[01:07:20] Aatif Hassan: I think there was a rhetoric that tech is good. Mm-hmm. And we should lean in heavily. Mm-hmm. And we were a decade ago, certainly defined by how many smart boards we had. I'm talk about basic level of tech at that point in time today, I think.
I'd reframe that conversation now is tech is an enabler and as a partner rather than as a destination in itself.
[01:07:47] Lin: Amazing one practice in your schools that you're most proud of.
[01:07:50] Aatif Hassan: There's so many different things happening across together, but one of those, 'cause it's so, I feel so passionate about this as a dyslexic, it's something called dare time, DEAR.
Mm-hmm. Drop everything and read and that sort of notion, not only of reading a book, the fulfillment of fiction, the immersement of language, the rhythmic benefit of reading and additive recovery. But I think there's some power in stillness, calming a child's mind and allowing them to just have fun.
[01:08:16] Lin: Amazing. And finally, one piece of advice you have for founders hoping to make a similar mission driven pivot as you have
[01:08:22] Aatif Hassan: three things, dream big, build fast, be brilliant.
[01:08:28] Lin: Amazing. Thank you so much for your time.
[01:08:30] Alex Sarlin: Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community.
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