In Pakistan, 65% of children aged 5-16 cannot read a simple story in any language. Yet enrollment research indicates that vast numbers of those children attended school, even if they did not finish. So what did they learn there?

The simple answer is: not much. We can change this.

RRP creates internet-enabled learning environments. In these spaces, we teach high potential, low-income students how to use computers, the Internet and a vast array of educational web resources. We curate the best online educational content from around the world and present it to students in a structured, blended setting, where we balance physical instruction with online practice. Apart from skills, we build critical thinking and growth mindset. In this setting, we believe our students can learn any subject.

In doing so, we:
1) Improve their learning outcomes, measured conventionally by performance in school/board exams. This increases their chances of staying on in school, potentially denting the abysmal primary school dropout rate of 45%.

2) Cause a fundamental shift in perspective by changing what they know about the universe, how they perceive the world around them and how they approach concepts thereafter – through mastery, not rote.

To figure out how all this could come together, we began a small pilot in Shah Rasool Colony in February 2013. For 12 months, we tested a simple hypothesis with 34 Urdu-medium students at a government school: that sustained, guided exposure to online resources would improve academic performance in Math and English and cause massive gains in digital literacy and programming skills from a negligible baseline.

We "adopted" the school's computer lab, outfitted their existing machines (ten Pentium-4 PCs) with DSL Broadband and new hardware where necessary and ran Ubuntu/Linux as the operating system. Our classes for the duration of the pilot were free.

The data we collected showed that our pilot worked - our students improved significantly and measurably across the three subject areas. However, it emerged that most of them were functionally illiterate in English, some even in Urdu - their language of instruction. They had until that point "survived" through an ingenious system of memorization, recognition and process of elimination - but they were not really reading.

We decided that in order for any person to benefit from a self-learning environment within the next few years, they would need to be deeply English literate. And because self-learning is our goal, we decided to get involved in the process of making that happen. As such, we now offer English literacy and Digital Literacy hand in hand - as the fundamental two pathways to all future self-learning. We're hoping to take non-readers to reading at the second grade level within one year. Our students are both children and adults and they love to learn.

This page is our story and the best way to stay in touch with us. We’ll regularly be posting snippets, photos, things we try and research we find interesting from the ed-tech world, here.

For more info, visit www.readingroomproject.org.
To work with us, email us your CV and area of interest at future@readingroomproject.org. Hint: we’re currently favouring Learning Coaches!

To talk to us about content, Pakistan, education, partnerships or anything else – email us at info@readingroomproject.org - we’d love to hear from you.