Kenya’s first school term was brought to a sudden halt after the government announced the closure of all learning institutions to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This has forced parents and students to look for alternative learning channels to continue with their learning while waiting for school to resume. The challenge is that not all students have access to revision materials during this stay at home period. There are also various challenges that learners encounter while learning at home like being stuck when they have challenging questions or not understanding why their answer is wrong. This makes it difficult for them to study.
However, great stories have emerged from learners who have been using Shupavu291 to learn during the COVID-19 pandemic.
After the schools were shut down, we partnered with Safaricom to provide Shupavu291 and Shupavu Web for free to students in primary and secondary for 60 days ending May 31st 2020. Students are able to receive revision lessons and interactive quizzes and revision papers. They can also ask any difficult academic questions through our unique Ask a Teacher feature.
We talked to a few of our users and their parents to find out how they are using Shupavu291 and here are their stories.
Rose Akinyi, a parent from Kayole is happy that her children have been able to access free revision materials to help them keep up with their studies. “Thank you for your good work. My children are not idle at home as Shupavu291 has been keeping them busy ever since the schools were closed in March.” said Rose.
Titus has been one of the super users of the platform even before it was made available free. He says that despite the fact that he is missing his classmates and the school setting, Shupavu291 is helping him catch up with school work with schools being closed due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Titus will be among the class 8 candidates who will be sitting for this year’s KCPE exam and he is determined to be ready by October.
“With Shupavu291, I feel like I’m in a classroom. There is enough content for me to revise all day. I like the Ask a Teacher feature as I am able to ask any question that I am not able to answer and the Shupavu291 teachers always respond to me.”
Over the course of the last month we have seen a huge increase in the students subscribing and learning on Shupavu291. As of 15th May, we had over 1 million students subscribed to Shupavu291. An average of 200,000 students are active on the platform everyday and we receive an average of 19,000 questions on Ask a Teacher. This has been really encouraging for the team as we can see the impact we are creating during this pandemic.
Learners can access Shupavu291 via USSD by dialling *291# or Shupavu web at mwalimoo.com/m/start