“My ambition is for children to feel more confident in the real world,” says Sneha Biswas, founder of education start-up Early Steps Academy. Using a combination of digital technology, expert educators, and an educational model based on Harvard University’s teaching style, Biswas believes she can equip millions of children for success in a world that is changing at breakneck speed.
“What children learn in school is not necessarily what will help them succeed in life,” Biswas said. “The world has changed so much in the last decade, and it’s very hard for any school to keep up.”
Biswas’ argument is not that schools are doing badly. Instead, she says, they don’t have the time or bandwidth to provide everything kids need on their educational journey. In most schools around the world, she notes, children spend most of their time learning the same lessons and subjects their parents learned a generation earlier. And it is difficult to encourage children to learn to think independently and to ask questions within the confines of school curricula.
As a result, Biswas says, schools are producing young adults who feel insecure about their place in the world. “It’s what you know that makes you feel more confident, but kids need to learn in a way that’s relevant to today,” she adds. Modern technologies will automate large parts of the economy in the coming years, Biswas notes; the remaining jobs require creativity, independent thinking and the ability to solve problems.
The big idea underlying the Early Steps Academy is that the case study style of learning used by Harvard could revolutionize children’s learning. The start-up offers a huge curriculum, with education available in areas ranging from entrepreneurship and cryptocurrency to space technology and applied mathematics, but the approach is the same for all of its courses. Each week, children are given a case study and asked to think about how they can solve this with what they learn – in other words, to put theory into practice.
Classes are conducted online, with children encouraged to discuss the case study with each other and with their teachers (although Biswas prefers the term “moderator”). “The goal is to provide real learning where kids think about the practical applications of what they discover,” she says. “We’re focusing on emotional intelligence and skills like empathy and collaboration — the kind of skills employers will really appreciate in the future.”
Early Steps Academy founder Sneha Biswas
It is a model that Biswas has developed based on her own experience with education and work. “I grew up in East India in a place where you would expect options to be limited, but my parents constantly encouraged me to be curious and try new things – to develop the skills I need later in life. would have,” she says. . She went on to study at the Indian Institutes of Technology and Harvard while teaching herself, and then worked for multinational corporations including the oilfield services company Schlumberger and the consulting firm Bain.
Eventually, Biswas launched Early Steps Academy, attracting funds from investors including Beenext of Singapore and Taurus Ventures of the US. The company has grown rapidly and to date has worked with over 20,000 students in just over 20 countries around the world.
The starter courses are aimed at children ages eight to 18 and cost between $18 and $25 per week. To that end, kids get access to a live online class delivered each week by the course moderator – usually with industry experience with what they’re teaching – and access to the Early Steps Academy learning platform, which offers a range of background material and support.
The company develops its model based on analysis of the learning experience of children and their families. Biswas says feedback from families suggests kids feel 10 times more confident after taking one of the Early Steps Academy courses — happier to participate in school and elsewhere, and able to interact more and openly with peers .
The next challenge for Biswas and her team is to scale up the model. She points to the size of the global market, with currently 2 billion children of school age. Survey data shows that nine out of ten of them lack confidence in the real world. “The key is to reach many more children while being absolutely sure that we don’t compromise on the quality of the education we provide,” she says. “There’s no point in doing it unless we feel like we’re changing children’s lives in a meaningful way.”
A big step forward is developing course content in languages other than English, Biswas says. At present, Early Steps Academy only reaches children who are comfortable learning English, so transitioning to new languages has the potential to significantly expand the company’s market.
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