PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release - 3rd April 2021
UK BASED ‘NETFLIX FOR TEACHING’ RAISES OVER 8 MILLION DOLLARS IN FUNDING TO ALLEVIATE WORLDWIDE TEACHER SHORTAGE.
Guide Education, a UK based education-tech company founded by former Headteacher Leon Hady, has raised £6 million ($8.25 million) in seed funding to address the increasing shortages of qualified teachers worldwide. Novistra capital acted as advisors to Guide Education.
The company was founded to leverage the potential of online delivery and mentoring, and in particular widening access to educational material for disadvantaged students. Now boasting a 7-figure turnover, Guide Education is focusing on encouraging more people into teaching and providing them with the tools they need to springboard into a teaching career. Founder and CEO Leon Hady highlighted the unique opportunity and responsibility that came with it:
“The investment is a testament to the sustained impact we’ve had across schools and learning institutions. Over the years we have refined our services and are now poised to super-scale our offering. The UN has stated that the world will be 68 million teachers short by 2030. Without a qualified teacher in every classroom in every school, the quality of education for young people will diminish significantly. This will impact the poorest students first and foremost, furthering educational inequality. We will work tirelessly towards stopping that from happening.”
Guide Education currently work with over 700 schools and has helped train and develop over 15,000 teachers. Their content has garnered millions of views across thousands of videos organised into dozens of courses. Users credit Guide Education’s proprietary technology, that allows for personalised learning journeys and detailed student-mentor interactions, as a key factor in their success and uptake of the platform. Hady went on to say: “What makes Guide Education unique is the flexibility we have built into our learning systems. We’ve taken all the core elements of effective face-to-face learning and repurposed them into a 4-step process that improves teacher training outcomes in a faster, cheaper and more impactful model. Educational technology should bend around the user, not the other way round. Our software has been designed by teachers for teachers and holistically supports the delivery of pedagogy and an actual learning process. It’s true online learning possibilities being offered, not just online delivery of offline content.”
David Hans-Barker, Guide Education’s Co-Founder believes the investment will allow them to further their mission in improving the quantity and quality of teachers and thus creating better outcomes for all learners. He said: “Education levels the playing field and as long as we lack quality teachers, our education systems will always be unequal. That’s why we want to get this to everyone. It’s time for the monopoly to be over, your background should not determine the quality of teacher you can access. Teachers are the most powerful differentiator in a student’s educational outcomes and thus their life chances. We have the tools to make a difference and now we have the means too.”
Guide Education's next step is to offer their school focussed product to the wider audience of the general public as a 'Netflix for teacher training', with interest in teaching, learning and online delivery at an all time high.
Osiris Educational, having bought exclusive licenses for Guide's technology and resources for academic institutions in select territories, will continue the school-based work Guide have begun. A priority showcase of Guide's platform and technology will be the hosting of the World Education Summit event replays in April 2021.
Guide Education will also be continuing its work on using machine learning technology in 'Deep Fake' creation, to bridge the gap between leaders, teachers and their wider school communities.
NOTES:
Guide Education provide over 3000 videos in 30 courses covering 5 years of teacher training materials. They are now developing their Early Career Framework material.
Guide work with 720 schools across the world, either whole school or with individual teachers
Guide also own and run TuitionKit, a GCSE support system that provides learning opportunities for over 600,000 students in 24 countries.
Company website: www.guideeducation.co.uk
Flagship product website: Www.guideconnect.co.uk
For all media enquiries, please contact Guide Education’s marketing officer, James Dallison - James@guideeducation.co.uk
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