“Most of the guys are struggling not because the guys are stupid‚ but because of certain behavioural issues where we’re just trying to catch so many balls at once.”
TutorSA was informally established in 2007 by three university students offering face-to-face tutorial services to matriculants at the Forte High School in Dobsonville‚ Soweto. After increased demand‚ they formally registered as a non-profit organisation in 2012.
It’s still early days for the app‚ with 109 current users. The app provides tutoring for mathematics‚ science‚ accounting‚ life science‚ economics and business studies from grade 10 to matric. There are more subjects available for grade eight and nine.
The tutors are third-year education students at UJ who have to complete at least 15 hours of tutoring for their studies.
Tutor Mack Mogale said: “You can log in at any time … I think this is a new way to incorporate extra classes‚ but when it comes to the actual teaching we still need the classroom. We still need the teacher-learner interaction.”
Lekwape said their biggest struggle was changing the mindset around education.
“The mindset that is still out there with the department [of basic education] is that not every learner will have a smartphone‚” Lekwape said.
“The app itself will not accommodate everyone. It is only for certain digitally savvy learners who will benefit from it.”
Lekwape said data costs were another challenge to expanding the app‚ which is currently available for free on the Play Store for Android.