Accelerated English Program via Self-Learning | EdTech

A modern truism is that learning occurs via the Internet in the information age we live. That is predicated on a child's ability to read English. This is a problem, given the mother tongue for the vast majority of the children in Pakistan is not English and nearly 25 Million children do not go to school. The nearly 25 million that do go to school face many challenges in picking up English skills given poor quality of curriculum, limited capacities of teachers and large class sizes.

At Khud we are fiercely focused on implementing a curriculum that accelerates English reading. How? We are developing a digital pedagogy that uses technology to implement a program of structured self-learning. We are not looking to re-invent the wheel, especially when there is amazing content available. After searching and testing publicly available resources, we picked E-Learning for Kids. Developed by a team led by Dr. Nick van Dam, Global Chief Learning Officer for McKinsey,  the site is focused on providing "fun and free learning on the internet for children ages 5 - 12." The site offers "free, best-in-class courseware in math, science, reading and keyboarding; and we're building a community for parents and educators to share innovations and insights in childhood education."

We have successfully piloted many of their gamified English lessons in our second school in Lahore, Pakistan:

It is a platform that allows for learning to happen in an interactive and enjoyable manner:

Here are two students showing off their certificate:

With the successful completion of the initial pilot, we are firming up the lesson plans around "Accelerated English" so we can roll this out across more schools and share with other educational institutions.

We are thankful to Dr. Nick van Dam and Michael Williams (@ E-Learning for Kids) for assisting us in navigating through the technical challenges that we were facing. We look forwarding to working with them in utilizing their brilliant platform as we further build out a comprehensive pedagogy.