Challenges to EdTech Adoption by Teachers in Pakistan
As we’ve onboarding teachers from low-cost schools onto the Beaj app, we have experienced the same challenges the LEAPS team faced, both when onboarding 6000 Government school teachers in KP to an app in the TIP program, and when onboarding 1,500 low-cost private school owners in Punjab to a school management system in the Ilm Exchange program.
Clearly, the challenges to EdTech adoption in low-resourced environments are consistent, sticky and ever-present, and for everyone dreaming of tech completely ‘reinventing’ education in Pakistan, here’s the big takeaway: there is a long, long way to go for that to become a possibility.
Before I dive into specific lessons we learned and challenges we faced, here’s the context: 100 teachers (90% female) were offered an app-based Spoken English course. The course is 4 weeks long, requires access to a smartphone for 20 minutes of engagement with the app every day, and costs Rs. 600 (~USD 2.5), although these teachers were offered a promotional discount to be our initial testers. Its most defining feature is an emphasis on speaking practice every day, with basic speech recognition built in so the app tells users whether their responses are correct or incorrect, and users can play back their own recordings to compare their pronunciation and accent with that of the instructor.
Here’s what we learned:
When incentives align, people are open to trying new technology: 88 teachers paid upfront to take the course. Being able to speak English is not only a work necessity, but also an aspirational goal linked to perceived prestige, socioeconomic mobility and higher self-esteem for most of this target market. Teachers were most excited about the opportunity to actually practice speaking, and that too in a judgement-free zone with personalized feedback.
Devices are generally available, but mostly old: Nearly all our teachers owned their own smartphones, and those who didn’t had access to a smartphone in their homes. However, most devices are old android phones that are slow, don’t have much memory and need system upgrades. Any app for use at scale in Pakistan needs to be compatible with really old devices and operating systems and can’t be too big so as not to take up too much memory.
Regular Internet access is still a huge problem: Most of our teachers, like other low-income users, have social media packages (the most common being a monthly Rs. 100 Whatsapp package) but beyond that, often don’t subscribe to data packages regularly and don’t have access to wifi in their homes. The cheapest monthly data package we found to use our app online was for Rs. 250 (~USD 1), which may sound low to many of us but is a non-trivial monthly expense for our users. Furthermore, a lot of places outside big cities struggle with data coverage and don’t get reception for uninterrupted usage. The lesson here is that in order to ensure regular usage, apps need to be available offline, requiring users to connect to the internet not more than once a week to sync data.
A lot of hand-holding is necessary at the beginning: Users in low-resourced settings often have low digital literacy, even when they own devices, and need a lot of support and guidance on how to first download and install an app, then navigate it, even with really simple UI. In the TIP program we identified a ‘tech captain’ in each school – a teacher who is relatively more familiar and comfortable with tech than the others – who played a big role in helping other teachers use technology. We’re using a similar strategy at Beaj. Whatever you call these point people, the lesson is that you need physical boots on the ground to help most teachers use new tech, at least initially.
Machines are good, but need to be supplemented by human interaction: Teachers seem to like interacting with the app, but also want to able to access live humans for questions and reassurance. We’ve thus created Whatsapp groups to function as virtual classrooms to supplement the app. When a user signs up for a Beaj course, they get allocated to a Whatsapp group with a live instructor and a community of fellow learners. We’re hoping these groups can be used to maintain momentum and encourage course completion, and act as a platform to answer questions and solve problems, slowly giving learners the confidence to practice English with each other.
We haven’t seen much of a gender divide in take-up or usage yet, but that may be because over 90% of our initial users are female. As we expand and collect usage data, we will be looking out for gender, age, qualification, urban/rural and SES differences. We’re also super excited to actually begin collecting learning data to see how effective our program and method are.
Conclusion
Though official numbers likely under-represent reality, there are an estimated 2 million K-12 teachers in Pakistan: about one third (mostly female teachers) employed at low-cost private schools (NGO schools like TCF, DIL, etc. make up a tiny fraction of these), and about two thirds at public schools. The vast majority of our teachers need to upskill in various dimensions, English being a key one, both because it’s actually necessary to be globally competitive in today’s world, and also to cater to our nation’s confused language policies and aspirations. A British Council study estimated that only 6% of Pakistani teachers are proficient enough in English to teach it. That might explain why our schools have been unable to teach students to read, write, understand or speak English: because there simply aren’t enough proficient people to teach it.
Beaj Education aims to make English language proficiency easily accessible and affordable to anyone who wants it. We’re starting with teachers, but have programs for younger students, older students, and other professionals. If you’re working in this field and think it would be beneficial to collaborate, or if you’re an institution who could use a supplemental English program, please get in touch! We’d love to hear from you: info@beaj.org.
By Zainab Qureshi