IEFG BIG Series: Bridging Learning Inequity with EdTech

Welcome to the IEFG Brains in Gear series. Can EdTech be the force for bridging learning inequities, or will it exacerbate them even further? Hear the perspectives of our hosts and their guests as they discuss this and consider possible roadmaps to navigate this divide.

Our hosts are 

Raman Sidhu is the CEO of the Octava Foundation, where she stewards the foundation’s investment in Education, Technology in Education, and Social Innovation. She has spent more than a decade in venture philanthropy, specializing in supporting and scaling education and employability solutions.

Guilherme Cintra is from Lemann Foundation, where he manages innovative processes and shares knowledge, achieving ambitious and transformative goals. His work focuses on promoting the development of educational solutions in Literacy, Fundamental Education, and Leadership, contributing to the advancement of education at the national level.

With them, we have guests 

Seiji Isotani is a Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Full Professor of Computer Science and Learning Technology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He has dedicated his research career to advancing the science concerning how people learn with interactive/intelligent educational technologies and ensuring that every student receives a fulfilling and meaningful educational experience. 

Cate Noble is the co-founder of Better Purpose. She brings experience as an education leader, having previously been CEO of the Varkey Foundation and a Director at PwC, as well as senior education-focused roles with not-for-profit, commercial, and government organizations. 

Here are some resources for your reference:
Batazia- translation AI
DIKSHA - India's EdTech platform
MIT Solve- Learning challenges

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Transcript

Seiji: When we think about designing technologies to support equity, we need to think about, okay, what is equity? Is everyone learning the same or is something else? 

Cate: Most organizations were serving markets that were direct to students and being paid for by parents because that is a much more straightforward way of doing business.

That's a totally rational behavior for these organizations. And so it's understandable why most products will focus in the first instance, not at the bottom of the pyramid. I think that 

Gui: The phrase that really got into my head is that they said that uniform approaches don't work, but unified approaches work.

And I think this distinction is perfect. Made so much sense for me when they said it to me. 

Raman: Because the products have to get to a size of scale before they can economize for cost. We are unnecessarily putting that pressure on that tech products to be low cost accessible and affordable at the bottom of the pyramid now, especially at that emerging stages of their growth.

Anjali: Welcome to the IEFG Brains in Gear series. This conversation digs deeper into the role of edtech and philanthropy in bridging the inequity in education and how solutions can be contextualized to the contexts of all learners. To take us through this discussion, we have Raman Sidhu from the Octava Foundation.

Guilherme Cintra from the Lemann Foundation, and Seiji Isotani, who is a professor at the Harvard University and the University of Sao Paolo, and Kate Noble from The Better Purpose.

Gui: Hello everyone, here's Guilherme, throughout this call I'll call myself Gui, which is way easier than my actual name. I work at the Lemon Foundation based in Brazil. In this episode of the IEFG series, we're going to talk about edtech and also about how it impacts inequality or equality. We're trying to explore the potential to actually make sure that kids keep learning, to actually make sure that it doesn't matter where you are, you can learn and be in school and actually leverage these types of technologies.

I really believe in the power of edtech I only believe it if we think about it in the design process. It cannot be an afterthought, and I think that we have to approach this as an ecosystem to discuss right now. Raman? 

Raman: Hello, folks. I'm Raman Sidhu. Thank you, Gui, for that introduction. I'm the executive director of Octava Foundation, a philanthropic foundation based out of Singapore.

And I like to believe I'm an optimist when it comes to the role of edtech and the opportunity of edtech. And I do genuinely believe that edtech offers the opportunities that we've not had before. I'm here to share with you some questions that we at the foundation are grappling with. Some lessons we are learning and also to think hard about the role of philanthropy and reaching the enabling environment that these ed techs would really need to become the force of impact for the bottom of the pyramid learner.

This is absolutely exciting. I have brought a friend along with us, Kate, but I'll pass it back to Gui and then we'd love to introduce Kate as well. 

Gui: Great. So as you know, we brought some friends along to help us in this journey. And I brought Seiji. I really admire his work with AI, and he can tell you way more than I can about what that means.

And also has been working on that tech for quite a while, always thinking about the design process in which. We can actually bring this to the people that are most underprivileged in the world. Seiji, if you want to introduce yourself and talk a little bit about it.

Seiji:  Thank you, Gui and Raman for receiving me.

So I'm really excited as well for this conversation. It's a passion to work with technology and education. So currently I'm a professor of education at Harvard University here in Cambridge, US. But I'm also a professor of computer science and learning technology at University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. So I've been working in this topic, technology plus education, plus public policy for the past 10 years, trying to understand how we can design technologies to provide access and opportunities for underserved populations.

So you can imagine the global South, which we have more than 80 percent of the population living somewhat in other server regions and the role of AI and edtech in this space can have a huge impact, both positive and negative. So thank you very much, Gui. 

Raman: That's fantastic. Thank you. I'm equally excited to speak with you, Seiji.

I'd love to bring in Kate Noble to introduce herself. 

Cate: Thank you, Kate. Delighted to be part of this conversation. Thank you. So I'm the co founder of Better Purpose, which is an education specialist consultancy and services organization. We work with educational organizations all over the world, helping to shape and accelerate the work that they do towards delivering on their purpose and promise.

And so in this conversation, we're particularly interested in how do you establish the conditions for EdTech, which has been shown to improve learning outcomes in specific circumstances. How do you set the right conditions for that to improve learning outcomes for the most underserved? So delighted to be part of the conversation and looking forward to getting going.

Gui: So the first question, very simple. Can education actually have edtech as an equalizer. There is this premise, maybe Seiji could help us to understand that. What is this premise of equalizing with education? Because that's something that you actually work a lot. Can this be achieved? 

Seiji:  How can I say, it's a tough question, right?

So if we look into the data of the impact, the current impact of education technology, We cannot say that educational technology actually supported equity or equality. So this is one thing that we need to lay out upfront. From the other hand, the way how people have been designing educational technology is not optimal in the sense that most of the technologies have concentrated their efforts to support , places with infrastructure that can already handle those technologies. So can we create technologies to support education for places and regions where infrastructure and technology is almost not available? More than half of the population are in those conditions, in vulnerable conditions. So help them in terms of increasing learning outcomes and also supporting well being of students.

So in summary, it's an opportunity that we can actually work with educational technologies to support those populations. I'm a firm believer that educational technology can be used to support equity and equality across the globe. So there is no barrier in terms of culture. There is no barriers in terms of access.

It's just a way of rethinking our design of technology. At least that's my take. You can challenge me on this. I will be happy to, to listen to your thoughts. 

Raman: That's fantastic. So I fully agree with you, actually using more accessible technologies in the context that startups are designing for is common sensical, isn't it?

Maybe I should have different perspective, right? Not from a tech and not from an edge tech and whether a tech is an equalizer. So the way I think if we were to really point it out and bluntly, so the only equalizer for underserved population. Are twofold. One is the political intent for equity in learning.

Two is the access to education finance for political intent to practice equity in learning. To actually be able to bring equity in learning. Until and unless we work on these two, Issues, no amount of tech or small solutions and products are going to create the results that we're hoping to see in public school systems.

So I think that's my first overarching, while we're having an edtech conversation, the conversation that's, that needs to be held simultaneously with edtech is the conversation about political intent around equity in learning for all learners. And access to education finance for this political intent to come into play.

So I think having said that, from what works in the schools, we at the foundation have come to realize that while tech is developing and we have a lot of innovative new technologies at play, and a lot of it is actually quite contextualized. To the situations, for Wi Fi, the organizations are actually thinking about the hardware as much as the soft content.

What is still missing broadly across Southeast Asia is who is buying the edtech and who is allowing for edtech. To come into schools and really work with the schools directly with the school teacher that they hope to impact, with the learner that this edtech hopes to impact, and with the school systems in a way that this edtech can learn and the school systems can learn of how this can be seamlessly integrated.

So I'll ask you to bring further details into this as we were doing the challenge, but I know Kate, you, you're working in other locations beyond Southeast Asia, where you may be seeing other things that are becoming a barrier to edtech as an equalizer. 

Cate: Yeah, thanks Raman. And really just to build on the points that you've both made, I am also an optimist that edtech can really strengthen learning outcomes, however.

This is not something that can be left to the market because on its own, the market will not be able to solve this problem. And we certainly saw in the social innovation challenge that was conducted with Octava Foundation a couple of years ago, that most organizations, We undertook a mapping of the provision of EdTech products.

Most organizations were serving markets that were direct to students and being paid for by parents, because that is a much more straightforward way of doing business. But that's a totally rational behavior for these organizations. And we know that access to the most marginalized children and young people will be via governments.

Thank you. And it can be all over the world in high, middle and low income countries, difficult to deal with governments in terms of being able to supply products and services to government schools. And so it's understandable why most products will focus in the first instance not at the bottom of the pyramid, which is where we're really focused in this conversation about equity.

And that's really, even before you get into the challenges of adoption of ed tech products in lower middle income countries. I think there are lots of reasons for optimism that actually don't go exactly via a market that will be more focused on working with government, understanding the political economy, understanding the different drivers.

And I think to your original point, Raman. Really thinking about what works and how ed tech or technology can support that rather than thinking about the ed tech as the primary intervention. 

Gui: So I think the points that you made Kate are amazing. My point of view, I think that When I talk about ecosystems, I talk about governments, private sector, funders, third sector.

For these different types of solutions to actually overcome all of these challenges, we have to think about all of that. I was lucky to be able to be part of the private sector, public sector, and third sector. And so nowadays, I look at that and I say, well, when I was in the public sector, I could actually go to the third sector and ask them for help to accelerate a lot of what we are doing.

So now in the third sector, I make sure that I am this guy that helps the public sector to actually accelerate what they're doing. But also I was in a VC once and I saw that the incentives that we had, I'll tell you something, which is very straightforward. If you work on a VC and you work with a, an EdTech that will sell to governments.

One thing that you should do is when you look at the revenue, you have a line, for instance, that's the line of revenue for governments and the line of revenue for private sector. The value for the public sector revenue is normally zero. And the reason for that is that a lot of VCs will look at that and say, well, this is very risky.

This is not something that I want to deal with. Governments change, the funding changes. I don't know what's going to happen. And as you said, I think this word that you used is so important. It's rational to do that. It's very rational to do that. It's not a matter of not caring or not wanting to deal with that.

It is not rational. If you are not only optimist, you have this money to fund. One thing that I think it's lacking. We'd love to hear your opinions on that is I think we think a lot about offer, which is something that the VCs will already do, but we don't think a lot about education for who is actually buying stuff.

And so Roman said, like, you have to have someone buying the right stuff. And if you look at Brazil, I saw we do this gathering your data and we saw that their government's like, they're buying like VR glasses, but they don't have connectivity. They don't have content. So why are they doing that? It doesn't make any sense.

So there is this educational part of, What you actually can buy. And we also have to think about ways to make procurement easier. And when I talk about procurement, I'm not only talking about advocacy for better laws, which is something interesting, but also thinking about like very interesting ways to, you know, Think about procurement, which is you have parameters.

I'd love to hear what your views on that. 

Cate: Yes. There are a few threads that I could pick up within that. And I'm always struck by the difference in the context that we see and the role that third sector or nonprofit organizations, community organizations play. In some parts of the world versus others, we see a huge variation just within sub Saharan Africa around the strength of community organizations.

I guess one thing I would just say is that I do understand the government perspective on why it can be difficult to adopt edtech because it's hugely risky. When you look at the evidence base for how well edtech works. I was looking earlier at the Best Buys report that was produced by the Coalition of Global Funders a couple of years ago, and actually there's very little on ed tech.

It says that hardware in itself is not a good investment, and there are very few great examples of things that will definitely work. So I understand why governments can be skeptical. And so one of the things that I think is really important to do. Is to be really looking at the local factors around implementation and what will work in this context.

So, for example, some of the things that we're seeing in parts of sub Saharan Africa around teacher professional development and some innovations around using technology. to support teacher professional development and professional learning communities. They can be quite low tech, they can be using WhatsApp, they can be using document sharing, so that teachers can collaborate in their use of resources in quite a light touch way.

It's not particularly sophisticated, and actually it requires government sponsorship, otherwise the incentives for people to do it will not be there. And so I think it just takes us right down to the granular level whenever we're thinking about What will work and why? 

Seiji: If we think about the success cases of government driving innovation, are those that are very focused.

So we can imagine going to the moon or trying to address a particular problem that we have. And when I see education, we have very big. broader views of the challenges and not very focused. So we have this several different kinds of educational technology that do not provide the support the students and teachers need to actually solve the challenges of education.

And one idea that we provide to government at that time was, okay, so what do you want to do with educational technology? What is the benefit you are aiming for? And at the end of the day, the government came with the idea of, okay, so we wanted to buy technology to support learning improvement. Okay, so your metric is learning improvement.

So the one requirement that we ask every company through the process of procurement is providing. evidence, scientific evidence that that technology actually work for that particular domain. Give me evidence that you run like a RCT or a similar method for evaluating your technology, showing the benefits of your technology for that particular population that you are saying that your technology is good for.

When we think about designing technologies to support equity, we need to think about, okay, what is equity? Is everyone learning the same or is something else? Is reaching out as many people as we want? So we need to define what are the problems in that space. And then designing policies that state, well, that particular problem, and then supporting technological innovations in policy, we say technically correct, made a real effect on learning.

So it's supposed to make an effect. And it's political, acceptable, and it's implementable. If we think in the policy design arc, we need to reach all those elements. If we don't do this, the foundations are not there. So we won't have the results that we are expecting. So I think it's one idea. So 

Raman: I think that's very, very clever that you were just thinking about how do policymakers think about a specific problem that they want to solve for, and then thinking about can edtech help them resolve it.

And maybe I wanted to just touch upon the role of philanthropy in this mix. Right, and how the role of philanthropy can play into a enable the evidence. I'll share and I'll ask Kate to come into this as well. Because when we were sifting through the applications that came through for the challenge, and then we picked 10 winners, and then we worked with these 10 winners for a year after and enable them with capacity building, a lot of them The first request they all asked after the request of where can I find more capital?

The second request almost for every application was where can I get the capacity around monitoring and evaluation? Because edtechs in the startup phase are so very oriented and rationally so. around acquisition of learners up front, proving the case that they can engage the learner, the learner stays on the product for long, whoever that target audience is, whether it's a teacher or whether it's a learner directly, and that as part of this engagement, learner outcomes are Teaching outcomes or teaching practices then evolving, but for them to be able to go through all of these three phases of assessment, that means that they need to keep piloting in different contexts with different frames for a longer time.

That learning capital is what they usually don't have. If we are serious about enabling ed tech in the bottom of the pyramid context, in the government state buying context, then I think one potential opportunity philanthropy has is to. Enable ethnic organizations with the capabilities and technical capacities to be able to monitor and measure the impact so that they genuinely measure themselves towards an impact and not just monitor themselves to impact as well.

Cate: Yeah. Thank you, Raman. Yeah. We know that entrepreneurs, product developers will be very focused on the numbers and increasing the number of users that they have and some of the metrics around. Longer term engagement and spending more time on the platform. I'm sure that is a role for philanthropy and for buyers to be asking ed tech products, to be able to focus on those measurable components.

I think one other aspect that may not always feature in the discussions is actually. Effective design of products around what we know about how children learn. There are aspects that product designers can incorporate. into their products that will improve the likelihood of learning outcomes being raised.

And that can really be around, for example, interleaving and spaced learning and the design of a screen so that actually it doesn't have a cognitive overload. On the child or young person when they're trying to learn new content and really thinking about how you're building content and concepts on one another and really making sure that the learning process is going to be as effective as possible and looking at product design in terms of whether those components are designed in sometimes providing technical support to make sure that they are.

Gamification can be a really interesting example where It may increase engagement. It may increase the time that children spend on a product, but it may or may not actually improve their learning outcomes depending on how well designed it actually is. And so that's something that you can be asking through the drive for greater numbers and greater revenue.

That is a place that perhaps philanthropy and other actors can have an impact and can provide support in driving up learning outcomes. 

Gui: So I think that we can maybe discuss some interesting examples of what we have seen that actually worked. We actually saw that can add value. And in my perspective, the things that I saw that worked would actually, one framework of thinking about that is what is context dependent?

What is context independent? And what is context informed? And if you think about different sectors, one thing that I think is that in education, we have a lot of things that are context dependent, and that makes it very difficult for us to explore things and just like bring things to different places. I just came back from India.

One thing that they actually build is something called DIKSHA. DIKSHA is very interesting. It's what we call the digital public infrastructure framework. Which is a framework where you design the tools. And again, it's not about the tool, but the approach to design is very important here if you're talking about ed tech, right, but you design the tools in a way that you have usable reusable blocks of software that can be applied in different contexts.

And this reusable blocks will do a very specific function, but when you put them together, they add value. So what Seiji was saying about like, sometimes you have someone that's working very hard in one specific problem, but that doesn't add up to other solutions. This is exactly what we're talking about.

In India, one thing that's very interesting is that they have to have this approach of thinking about platforms because they have 1. 4 billion people with so many different cultures. It's so different, 22 different official languages. Official languages, not to say the other languages. So when you take a look at that, if you actually want to solve anything in India, you have to think about ways to think about different contexts and different cultures, and that has to be in the design.

So that's the beauty of it. And when I was there talking to these guys, what they built is, well, it begins with very simple concepts, which is keyword codes. So QR codes are things that are very low tech. A lot of students have access to that. You can say that at least in India, they have more than 90 percent of the teachers will have access to a very simple smartphone or a feature phone in some cases.

And so based on that, what they build is this infrastructure. It's implemented in the federal level, but locally you can change the content that's there enriching the textbooks, which is something very simple. You're not talking about very high tech stuff, but then as you have this infrastructure where actually you can have teachers that are bringing together content, making the curation, like governments, helping the teachers to actually develop that.

You're going to have different use cases in different places where the textbooks actually bring tech to the students that actually brings a very context based solution and that enriches the student's experience. And they actually see that students are using that when they are going into the school, because they have data on that.

So the adoption thing, where you talk about adoption, they can understand where the students are using, why are they using that, which times of the days, and they understand that they're shifting the habits of students and teachers. To actually use the textbooks and they can gather data to improve the public policies.

And they have been seen that this is actually in some specific regions where this has been well used. This is actually changing the way that teachers teach. So this is a case that I think it's, it's beautiful, which is something that if you actually provide a solution, that's empowering people that are contextualized, there's the third sector developing the solution.

Then you have the government that's actually using that locally. The data is for the government is not for third sectors is for the governments and users to use. Then you have an ecosystem of attacks that's actually using that to actually provide other solutions. So for me, that's an approach that really makes sense.

When you talk about the global south, when you talk about actually what we can do, when you think about this low connectivity places. And so I just wanted to bring this example because I think that for me, that's all about ecosystems and that's all about the ways that we can actually work together and think about this infrastructure in a different way, but it has to be in the design process.

It cannot be an afterthought. The phrase that really got to my head is that they said that uniform approaches don't work, but unified approaches work. And I think this distinction is perfect. Made so much sense for me when they said that to me. 

Raman: That was a great example. And maybe I can share a. The way to resource a tech example, which I think works from our context, that that has played out when we started looking at that tech and we made about 10 early investments as a result of the Octava Social Innovation Challenge, we had a grant maker, we had a philanthropic organization, seven of the 10 organizations were for profit organizations, I think, making peace with the idea.

That are you seeking the most charitable solution, or are you seeking the most impactful outcomes oriented solution for learner? Maybe there's a lens shift that philanthropy can also take, right? If an ethic is aligned towards outcomes for learners, That's an investment that we want to get behind, irrespective of the for profit or the non profit context that they come from, if they are operating towards aligning their product to the bottom of the pyramid, because the products have to get to a size of scale before they can economize for cost.

We are unnecessarily putting that pressure on that tech products to be low cost, accessible and affordable at the bottom of the pyramid now, especially at that emerging stages of their growth. When they really haven't got to economies of scale and so on and so forth. So more than a couple of products within the 10 organizations that we supported, who have then gone ahead after, you know, two years into two years post that early investment from Octava are now in low cost schools, for example.

Working with chains of schools in Philippines and Thailand and Indonesia, where they are being able to bought by local school chains to be operational in their schools. And I'm hopeful that this journey is a positive journey because they've come close to not the very bottom of the pyramid, but towards the middle and the bottom part of the pyramid of learners.

So I just wanted to share an alternative to a product. Like how do we really enable edX to grow?

Kate, can I bring you in to share a product story or probably an alternative story of what works in enabling edtech to be an equalizer?

Cate:  Thanks Raman. So a couple of thoughts actually. One of the things that I know we struggle with in many parts of the world is the language of instruction, particularly for Children who are learning to read at foundational levels.

So either very young children or children that have perhaps missed out on education. We also know that children who learn to read in their own language, their home language, the language that they're most familiar with, are much more likely to learn effectively and quickly to read than those who are being taught in a language that is not their own.

And we came across a really interesting organization called Batazia, that is using AI to translate and contextualize materials in different African languages and is doing so not by translating them into English, but being able to translate them from one language to another and provide a lot of contextualization along the way.

And speaking to partners, particularly in Francophone Africa, which is traditionally underserved in terms of the resources that can be put into Anglophone context. Actually, just seeing how quickly it would be possible to transform a curriculum so that it does cater to more learners needs, or to provide more local language books in a way that would not have been possible a year or so ago.

Now, of course, we know that the costs of AI and the skills needed to drive AI solutions are high. But actually looking at this through the lens of being able to solve a very specific problem, I think gives us cause for optimism. And we're also seeing, I think, other local, local ed tech organizations, seeing what is out there under creative commons licensing.

So thinking about organizations that are producing materials that are creative commons licensed, and being able to use AI to be able to take them and contextualize them to their context. 

Gui: I think there are Few things that I think are very important when you consider the role of philanthropy, and we're trying different approaches actually in the foundation.

So, The way we're trying to push that is to actually understand what role it can actually play where there is a lack of funding. And the lack of funding is exactly on this use cases that are more specific to the people that need the most. I think that what we're trying to achieve is like, how can we make sure that you have funding for this valley of death?

We're trying to reach this people, but you're trying to drive results, but you're not going to get a lot of money in the beginning because of that. So what we want to do is make sure entrepreneurs understand that, understand that they need specific kinds of funding to go and then show the value of the grading, right?

And then they can go on to have VC like funding them or something like that. So the way we're trying to tackle that is actually choosing some verticals that can actually be critically important for the next few years. Just to give you an example, we actually developed this AI alliance and we're investing in mathematics education.

We invest in teacher assistance, tutoring, and we are also investing in assessments. The reason for us to actually invest in those kind of things is that AI is coming, there's a lot of talks going on, people are gonna explore AI, and that's probably gonna have a huge impact in terms of inequity if we don't do that in a proper way.

And there is a lot of talk about tutoring. There is a lot of talk about teacher assistance. And I actually don't see a lot of people actually understand what they're talking about when they talk about this type of things. And we can help with that in terms of research and actually funding things that we believe that can actually add value in this sense.

The way you do that is like helping bridge this value of that gap. One good example they also saw in India is something called Attactuna. They have research and what works and what doesn't, why is that is. And then you have, as I said, a procurement part of it. So if a government has a six month cycle, and I think it's very important, Kate said something important.

Why don't the government's like buy stuff? And I was in the government, so I didn't buy stuff. Like I didn't buy, like I got that software. There are tons of reasons. One reason is as you said, Kate, I actually think that we don't have a lot of research saying, well, this works and this doesn't. So why would I buy something that I don't know works?

The other reason is that it just takes too long. So just quick maths here. If you want to buy something software, normally it will take you up to six months just to do the procurement documents. I'm talking about Brazil, of course, six months. So after six months, then you put that to actually be, and then it will take you up to four months just to actually start to implement.

And then you have the implementation, which takes a little while, at least three to four months, so you can actually implement stuff. And then to see the results, I don't know how much time you're going to need. So think about that in the standpoint of actually a government that's starting to go into flow.

So what we're saying is that you actually are starting to work without talking the third year of your government in Brazil. So what, rationally, why would you do that? So one thing that I think is very important is like for philanthropy is to actually make very easy for people to understand what works, when what doesn't, how to actually produce stuff and how to implement them.

It's not about substituting the government here, it's about helping the governments to actually deliver this sort of solution. 

Raman: I just wanted to build upon that whole procurement cycle, you know, from a government perspective. An alternative role, additional to what you were describing, that belong to be could deploy themselves towards is Enabling this very different type of finance to the edtech organizations who are at the cusp of being procured from by the state or are working towards working with the state, but need the working capital to sustain through these procurement cycles.

Because when they raise capital for such a thing, having letting go of their equity, that becomes difficult. But if we could come in with debt, for example, or other type of blending the finance, we could be enabling them to work through this working capital needs that they need to be deploying themselves with the state.

So I think that's an other, and we are actively exploring this here in Southeast Asia as to how do we enable, how do we build a platform That not just offers this blended finance to the ed tech folks who, who do want to, are ready with the evidence, have some emerging evidence and want to work with the state.

How do we get them access to the capital, but how do we help organizations who do have this evidence to access the state schools? Where are these sandboxes where they're going to actively learn and how do we enable them not just with the capital to find a sandbox, but actually to find the sandbox in the first place?

Gui: No, I totally agree. I think that another thing that we're beginning to explore is what we saw, as I said, that was we saw in India, which is actually building this ecosystems of people that are working with digital public goods. So you can actually like what they do over there with foundations such as Ek Step.

It's actually the beginning of the solutions and then it helps to drive the vendors that can actually build on top of that and provide that to governments and so building this capability in a country in a way that we actually have open source software that can be applied to different places.

Raman: As last words, I would just say we're all in this learning space. And I'm actively looking at learning further with the edtech partners that we're currently working with, but also with the research partners that we're working with, because the space is emerging and it's emerging at a speed that most of us are struggling to upkeep with.

Seiji: I'm really excited to be at this moment where the situation urges to be better, to do better and to work towards a better education using all sorts of technologies, digital or not, to support education across the globe. 

Anjali: We hope that you enjoyed listening to the conversation. To sum up the discussion on edtech's potential impact on bridging the equity gap, we heard that it starts with defining what we mean by equity and how that would look like in different contexts.

We also discussed how early stage organizations may not always be able to start with serving the bottom of the pyramid learners, but they can have an eye towards it from the get go. And build competencies and design elements on their platform such that it allows for an inclusive participation.

Philanthropy again can play a crucial role with innovative funding options such as providing the stopgap capital while the procurement process with the government is underway and support edtech organizations focus their attention on all learners and not just the ones that can afford it. This podcast was brought to you by the International Education Funders Group, curated and edited by Anjali Nambiar and post production by Sarah Miles.

You can learn more about the IEFG at www. iefg. org and do subscribe to the podcast for more such thought provoking conversations.

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