The Research Behind OxTrack
In 2007, we observed that some teachers in Nigeria who were trying to help students answer primary mathematics and reading comprehension test questions were themselves uncertain about the correct answers. The findings led to one State Government commissioning a formal study of the professional capabilities and knowledge of the entire population of its 20,000 teachers. This, and a series of successive census studies across other states in Nigeria, and thereafter, several World Bank supported studies across other African countries, confirmed the scale and depth of the problem. But while our studies have been able to provide robust policy-level information to governments, teachers have remained blissfully uninformed of the gaps in their knowledge of teaching, their understandings of learning, and their uses of student performance data. It has become clear that many good teachers don’t know how good they are; and teachers who are not as good, have no basis for comparison. Importantly, neither they nor the officials responsible for teacher training and service delivery can gauge whether over time, teachers grow and become better at what they do. This was the impetus behind OxTrack, which aims to put this information into the hands of every individual teacher. Through the mobile App, they can test their knowledge and understanding of a wide range of professional tasks, and see how their scores and professional profiles compare with others. Importantly, they can see how they grow as professionals from one assessment to the next (there are four assessments spread over a period of one year or more) and with individual feedback from our AI Tutor (OxTut), learn how to excel. While every teacher’s professional profile remains strictly private, seen only by them, they will now for the first time be empowered to use it as independently verified currency for job security, career development, and better pay and conditions; but above all, to provide parents with the confidence that the children’s futures are in safe hands. OxTrack has been incorporated by the University as a social venture spin-out company. The first extensive pilot was laun
