As Elevate has grown as a company, one of our primary objectives is to keep the company up to-date and as close to the cutting edge as possible in regards to the latest developments in pedagogy and teaching approaches, through to the latest in education technology. To this end we have been making a series of investments in leading EdTech start-ups, quickly becoming one of the largest EdTech investors in Europe. In Disrupting the Classroom, we profile these investments and what they mean to Elevate and our mission for Helping the Kids.
Our profile company for this edition is a new chain of schools that have opened in Australia called Luminaria (https://www.luminaria.org/).
Who is Luminaria?
Luminaria are aiming to build a chain of primary and high schools across Australia and South East Asia that completely re-think what a classroom looks like, and how students are taught. Susan Wu, the founder, sold her first company at 24, and went on to become an investor and adviser in a range of billion-dollar companies including Twitter, Stripe, Reddit, Square, and Canva. Moving to Melbourne, she couldn’t find a school that she was happy to send her child to and decided to start her own!
What problem are they solving?
Luminaria are attempting to solve 2 big problems:
1. Disengaged students: As discussed in previous newsletters, the Grattan Institute estimate that 60% of Australian students are disengaged at any point in time. There are a range of reasons for this disengagement, two of which are that methods of teaching haven’t changed must over the last thousand years so that students still largely sit passively in class listening to a teacher, and secondly, that students don’t see the personal relevance or importance of what they are studying.
2. Students lacking skills for the 21st Century Workplace: Oxford University predict that 47% of jobs currently performed will cease to exist in the next 20 years, as they will be replaced by automation in the form of AI or robotics. For students to future-proof themselves against this change, they need to ensure that they develop skills that are necessary to this environmental change: engineering, coding, design thinking, creativity and problem solving. The challenge with much of the education system right now is that these aren’t necessarily the skills that one learns on a day-to-day basis.
How are Luminaria solving this problem?
Luminaria are solving these problems by changing how students are taught in the classroom, and what they are taught.
1. How students are taught: Luminaria’s teaching is based on Project-based Learning. The idea at the heart of Project-based Learning is that learning becomes more engaging when students are working to solve a problem that is important to them. By working on real-world problems that are interesting and have emotional resonance, students are (a) more likely to proactively search for information; (b) learn through doing as the learning experience becomes active and tactile; and (c) understand the relevance and importance of the information that they are learning. In this style of teaching, students become active participants in their learning rather than passive consumers.
2. What students are taught: Whilst students are also taught all the content that they would otherwise be taught in primary school, they are also taught and master a range of skills essential to tomorrow’s workplace. As part of each project that students work on, students are required create an actual workable product that can solve the problem being addressed. This means that students need to master design thinking skills which includes critical analysis and creativity skills. Similarly, students need to develop engineering skills, entrepreneurial skills, collaboration, teamwork and communication skills as they work in groups, and a range of emotional intelligence skills as they learn to empathise, work with others, and deal with failure when projects that don’t work.
So, practically what does this look like? I was at Luminaria’s primary school campus in Williamstown last year, and witnessed the theory being put into effect. A Year 5 class were studying natural disasters as part of the national curriculum, and rather than just reading a textbook to understand the issue, they had a Skype call with a group of tribal elders on an island of Papua New Guinea that was experiencing a severe drought. In this call students developed an understanding of how the drought impacted the village and the real-world costs associated with water shortage.
The students then went away and brainstormed solutions that could be implemented for this village, deciding to develop and build an irrigation system that could actually be installed for the villagers. Students were engaged because they were solving a problem for real people whom they had spoken with, who would use their solution to change their lives for the better. They had to proactively seek out information on how to build an irrigation system, which meant researching physics, maths properties, prototyping, 3D printing, and so on. I watched 4 Year 5 girls as they discussed a prototype of a pump that they had made, whilst I thought to myself “Ok – how does a pump work again?” As they worked, I asked them whether they were having fun. They all turned around, looked at me and screamed “YESSSS!”, a response you don’t see very often in the normal classroom!
Eventually the project was funded by Rotary, and the working irrigation system was installed, and used by the islanders, helping to water and maintain their crops in the face of the drought.
Why is Elevate involved?
We have 100% belief that these schools will change the face of education in Australia and South East Asia. In fact, we believe so much in PBL as a method for teaching that this has become one of the critical pillars in our investment portfolio. We will walk through the other PBL investments in coming newsletters.
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