Founder Memo
More knowledge. More skills. More education.
Together on the path to better times
By Christian, Co-Founder of evulpo
evulpo · Founder Memo
School leavers have less and less knowledge, ever weaker skills, an ever lower level. This isn't an accusation. It isn't cultural pessimism. It's a seriously researched fact that has been observable in Switzerland for around a decade. Among other things, the PISA studies show unambiguously that, on average by the end of their schooling — there are always exceptions, of course — students today are less able to do maths, read, and write well, and also have weaker access to soft skills such as social competencies. And the fact that, despite this, school infrastructure in many places doesn't exactly make life easy for teachers — the most important people in the whole world of education — is the final straw on top of our education crisis.
That doesn't mean we should just sit back and do nothing about this crisis. But it's worth remembering: when citizens struggle to understand voting materials, when employees have trouble writing emails, when people like you and me find it hard to interpret statistics, things get difficult for democracy, for the economy, for society as a whole.
Learning progress at the centre
Every step towards a better standard of education is therefore very welcome. And that's exactly why evulpo — founded by Jonas Fehlmann and me in Zurich in 2020 — wants to contribute to improving education. We do this by developing a learning platform that demonstrably strengthens not only subject-specific knowledge but also cross-curricular skills. At its core, it's about nothing more than pedagogically sound, scientifically grounded learning units connected to feedback on learning progress — units that make it possible to learn and teach at a level tailored to each student.
To make this offering as easy as possible to use, it's essential for the evulpo team to connect our platform directly to the Swiss school system. Two aspects are especially decisive for us here. First, the units need to align with the official curricula. Second, the units need to be oriented around the mandatory teaching materials. Both students and teachers should have a simple way to strengthen, at the push of a button, exactly the knowledge and skills that are relevant according to the curricula and teaching materials.
An offering like this, focused on individual learning progress as well as the local system, is — as Jonas and I believed when we founded evulpo, and still believe today — certainly not the only piece, but definitely an essential part of the path to better times.
Nothing without a network
Do you believe this too? Whether you do or don't, we'd love to hear from you — whether you're championing education at a school, in a company, or in politics and administration.
Social change — something we sometimes forget amid rapid technological progress — never happens by itself. Social change is always man-made.
With that in mind: people who want to drive change towards a more educated society again should join forces. See you soon!
Warm regards