Investing in teacher quality is an investment in the education of our children. UNESCO projects a need for nearly 70 million new teachers worldwide in the next decade. However, current methods to select teacher trainees around the world are ‘ad hoc and information poor’ resulting in too much time spent identifying lower-quality candidates. In 2015 Robert Klassen was awarded a 5-year ERC Consolidator Grant to research and develop better methods to select prospective teachers into training and employment, by measuring non-cognitive skills such as resilience and organisation. The research showed that implementing state-of the art methods could save thousands of hours in the selection process, and identify better teachers. Subsequently, the research was extended to develop online tools to prepare trainee teachers for the classroom.
In 2019 Klassen was awarded a Proof of Concept grant to move the research of the ERC Consolidator grant (SELECTION) conducted by the Teacher Selection Project team towards commercialisation and to explore ways of creating impact through establishing a commercial venture.
The overall objective of the PoC grant was to prepare the services and tools of the Teacher Selection Project to be sold commercially to institutions involved with recruiting and training teachers, whether that be university based teacher training institutions, school based teacher training, government agencies or development organisations such as the World Bank. EduSelect has achieved this overall objective as it now offers online tools and consultancy services to make the selection and development of teacher candidates more efficient (saving time and costs) and more effective (identifying higher-quality candidates).
The PoC grant has allowed Klassen and his team to conduct market research, write a business plan, form an advisory board, and make decisions about the best form of commercialisation for this venture. The PoC grant has led to initial discussions with investors (including venture capitalist funders) and has led to further funding from the University of York and from the ARC Accelerator fund from Research England to provide funding for Year 1 of this commercial venture. Further funding will be sought from the European Innovation Council for Transition to a full-fledged business venture offering teacher recruitment, selection, and development tools.
