Private, public and civil society partnerships are key to mitigating the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the schooling system Joining forces to make a difference
The impact of the Covid-19 outbreak has disrupted the rollout of the annual learning programme immensely. The schooling system is making great strides to recover lost time through the intervention of multistakeholder partnerships. Teacha! Magazine measures the impact of two such initiatives.
Spar and Numberwise While homeschooling his children a couple of years ago, Trevor Lagerwall noticed that his kids struggled with basic numeracy. It didn’t take long before he realised that this might be a broad-based problem. This was the lightbulb moment that inspired him to conceptualise the Numberwise project. Shortly after it was launched, Numberwise
gained a bit of traction with a few schools opting to be early adopters. But it was only when entrepreneur Gavin Horn, who had bought and commercialised Numberwise, won Shark Tank SA – a reality show that pairs entrepreneurs with investors – that Numberwise’s fortunes began to change. “Through conversations with numerous professors and academics, I realised that countries that struggled with numeracy usually lacked an understanding of the basics,” says Horn. “Numberwise is a basic numeracy app designed for Grade 1 to 7 learners, but it has crossed over to older learners struggling with the subject, including those in adult-based education (ABED) programmes.” Teacha! Magazine | 39
