AFRICA.Kenya: Sunrise Home schooling, a Kenyan-based platform is changing the education narrative in the country through its home schooling scheme.
The scheme gained momentum in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic grounded global activities across all strata, according to to Disrupt Africa, a pan-African platform profiling epoch-making start-ups in the continent.
The start-up’s operation is strengthened by support and recognition from Kenya Literature Bureau (KLB), East African Educational Publishers Ltd, The Jomo Kenyatta Foundation, and Oxford University Press East Africa.
To ensure it provides qualified teachers to be deployed to the homes where they are needed, the Home schooling platform ensures teachers have at least five years of experience in the profession. Besides, such teachers must be registered with the Teachers Service Commission (TSC).
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The venture began as an in-person tutoring centre in 2016. Now, the platform fully operates online.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the centre, Ben Kairu said the pandemic forced the government to place restrictions on in-person learning. This, according to him pushed the platform to migrate online.
His words: “When the pandemic hit, there were so many inquiries, and since we could no longer continue with an in-person tutorship, we had to innovate around ways to continue offering services to our customers.”
“At the initial stages, we tried using Google Classroom, but they were so limited and we decided to develop our portal,” Kairu added.
Further, Kairu hinted that the institution offers more than the two Kenya-approved curricula. According to him, his Homeschooling platform also offers international curricula like British IGCSE, American curriculum, and Accelerated Christian Education (ACE).
The centre has scores of students from over 15 countries, said Kairu.“We have students from the US, all the way to China, and in-between. It’s a virtual product and accessible to students across the globe. There has been some technicality that comes with time differences, but we are amid a solution that we shall be launching soon,” he noted.
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