How Marking Start-Up ‘The Marking App’ Seeks To Provide Revolutionary Solutions To The South African Education System
How Marking Start-Up ‘The Marking App’ Seeks To Provide Revolutionary Solutions To The South African Education System. The Marking App is a South African based private company which was co-founded by two South African educators, Kabelo Mahlobogwane and Bonang Motsapi, who met at the Young African Leadership initiative’s Education Change-markers program which was hosted in partnership with the Trevor Noah Foundation.
Kabelo Mahlobogwane is an experienced Public Speaker with a demonstrated history of working with people, especially in the entertainment industry. Mahlobogwane also a professional with a Bed focused in African Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics from University of Pretoria/Universiteit van Pretoria. The company was established because it believes that South African teachers are spending a hefty amount of time on administrative tasks – time which could be better used on teaching in the classroom. Its mission is to develop and bring much needed and revolutionary solutions to current and future challenges that are faced by the South African basic education (and the world) through educational technology.
The company researches challenges faced by the education systems of Africa and then come up with solutions which are human centred and high social impact. Its first project is The Marking App: a high artificial intelligence data free mobile app which will assist teachers with marking and the related administration so that they can focus their time on quality teaching and preparation. This comes after it realised that the high failure rate in SA basic education is because of the imbalance between teaching and learning.
This is largely due to the load of administration duties which teachers have. This project aims to reduce teachers’ marking admin time by up to 95% and it is in line with the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, United Nations SDG 4 and the African union’s Agenda 2063. The project is funded through grants, donations and income made as they are all self-sustainable and do generate profit.
