William Nguru
Chief Product Officer, Kurasa Africa Ltd
Bold Question: What if teacher assessments were the primary way to understand student learning as opposed to end of period exams?
Pathway to Metis: William has always been a creator, having co-founded pa-id.co.ke and motilix.com among other technology solutions. He’s participated as a top innovator in the Transform Africa Summit 2019, Robert Bosch Mobility demo day, as well as the Entrepreneurship World Cup 2019.
During the COVID pandemic, he teamed up with friends Moses and Daniel to create Ziada School; an online school aimed at helping students who were at home cover their syllabi ahead of their national examinations. They had to build a robust formative assessment process to help parents buy into their school to support keeping their children in class. This enabled them to reach 50+ learners within a period of 3 months before the experiment succumbed after the reopening of schools in September 2020.Â
It is from this experience that he saw the impact of formative assessments and the power they have to eradicate the predominant focus in national examination–hence the birth of Kurasa. CBC grade books are strenuous and time-consuming to fill and tend to be utilised only at the end of the term. Kurasa offers a revolutionary way to implement and manage CBC learning easily online. CBC assessments can be filled in time by all teachers simultaneously and reports are sent out to parents weekly.
(CBC-competency-based curriculum recently rolled out by KICD (Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development))
More about William