The education crisis is global, with developing nations being hit the hardest. In Bangladesh, 4.3 million children are out of school and 58% of Grade 5 students struggle to read and comprehend a simple text. Traditional education models are too slow to solve the problem, but digital technology coupled with self-learning and gamification provide a cost effective and scalable solution.
Teach the World’s model is a simple and scalable “functional literacy” solution for students in Pre K to Grade 2. It has been deployed with excellent results in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malawi, in varied settings, from urban slums to refugee camps and remote Himalayan villages.
Our students outperform students in traditional schools, achieving at least 1.5 times the learning gains, as measured by independent third parties across time, multiple geographies, and environments.
We partner with best-in-class award-winning content providers and deploy their content on tablets and smartphones. The model does not require reliance on a trained teacher. The model delivers world-class reading, writing, and math applications in a gamified format, on low-cost tablets and smartphones. Children learn math, English and their local language in a gamified format for 2 hours a day/6 days a week in a facilitated setting within existing schools or in community-based learning centers powered by solar technology.
Over the last 2 years, Teach the World has scaled to 15,000 learners in 3 countries, with validated impact evaluations showing students outperform traditional models by 1.5x. Teach the World has also received global recognition, winning the World Bank’s Ideas4Action competition and featured by UNESCO among the best COVID-response interventions in 2021. Teach the World was a finalist in the MIT Solve Global Challenge in 2022 and finalists for MIT Solve Tiger Challenge for Bangladesh in 2019, which we presented in Dhaka. Teach the World was also among the winners of the 2023 MIT LEAP Challenge.
We have partnered with the Government of Sindh in Pakistan to scale to establish 125 new deployments which are serving almost 12,500 students in Pakistan. 100 more Digital MicroSchools are planned for the next year. Till 2030, we aim to scale to 200,000 learners globally by partnering with local governments for policy integration and implementation. We will create lasting social impact by:
Accelerating access to education
Enhancing socio-economic well-being
Empowering girls, women and communities
Teach the World's Digital MicroSchools model has been further tested at scale through partnership with the local government. We have set up a dedicated field structure including Community Officers, Technical Officers, Monitoring & Evaluation Officers as well as Area Managers to support the digital learning facilitators. Area offices have been established and embedded directly within beneficiary communities.
As part of recent program improvements, we’ve adopted a stronger community-driven design approach. Over 3,000 community members are now engaged annually through surveys, focus groups, and workshops. Regular feedback from parents, facilitators, and local leaders directly informs curriculum and operations, ensuring alignment with local values and needs. All new initiatives are piloted and refined within communities before scaling, making the program more responsive, inclusive, and impactful.
We are also moving towards more efficient methods of conducting assessments by piloting digital self-assessments to replace the current enumerator-based method. We are also partnering with MIT as well as our content providers to provide us a road map to holistically and regularly analyse in-game engagement data and provide ley insights.
Teach the World created The Digital MicroSchools model with the intention of replication across the developing world. We use off-the-shelf hardware to deploy content from internationally recognized providers. We can provide training and strategic oversight for deployment of the model. Organizations interested in partnering with us can contact our Vice President Adnan Ahmed at adnan.ahmed@teachtheworld.org.
