Paper provides unlimited 24/7 online tutoring and a full suite of educational support tools to … [+]
Courtesy of Paper
Stephanie Ricci contributed to this story.
Throughout his teaching career while an education student at McGill University, Philip Cutler saw firsthand how inequality drove a learning divide between students. After researching the education technology market, he concluded that no commercial solution could fairly and adequately serve every student.
And so, Cutler and his co-founder, CTO and COO, Roberto Cipriani founded Paper, an educational support system aimed at moving the needle on educational equity and helping more students succeed.
The EdTech company provides unlimited 24/7 online tutoring and a full suite of educational support tools by contracting with school districts at a fixed price. Their B2B model allows them to offer the service at no cost to students, families, or teachers and helps level the playing field for all students.
Based in Montreal, the academic support platform operates in the U.S., notably along the Californian coast. With over 2,000 professional and multilingual tutors, it reaches nearly 2.5 million students of all grade levels in over 200 subjects across North America.
The tutor team is made up of college students, doctoral candidates, and teachers committed to furthering their learning and professional development. When not working, these tutors review the sessions of others to provide them with feedback.
The key difference between Paper and other EdTech companies is its reluctance to target consumers directly—the most common business model in the industry.
“Charging students’ families doesn’t align well with our values,” said Cutler. “We wouldn’t explore that model because it increases the opportunity gaps facing students from low-income families and only provide resources to the families that can afford it.”
The digital teaching age
Evidence suggests that disruptions wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic have aggravated pre-existing inequalities amid remote learning. The need for academic support grew to an all-time high as learning gaps widened.
The global private tutoring market has soared since the post-pandemic recovery and is expected to reach $218.1 billion by 2027— a 76 % increase since 2020, according to ReportLinker.
Now, while students are back on campus, issues of access to laptops, the Internet, and other devices that existed before the outbreak are lingering in some states.
“Pre-pandemic, about 60% of school districts in the U.S. provided their students with devices,” said Cutler. “Today, that number is about 99%.”
Canadian provincial education authorities, however, have yet to follow the U.S. lead in making large-scale investments in tutoring to address learning loss as part of their national educational responses to the pandemic.
The English Montreal School Board (EMSB) in Montreal only provides laptops and other digital devices to students that prove they are in need, said Cutler.
This continues the inequality of education across the school system.
“How can you make decisions under the assumption that some kids may or may not have this device?” he said. “You’re not going to be able to buy a solution like PAPER until you commit to saying our students need technology, and the reality is that they do.”
Now, the company is seeking to develop past the tutoring solution and pushing for diversification of its product. New offerings for the 2022-2023 school year include Paper Math, College & Career Support, and PaperLive—a new video streaming service that provides after-school programming for free to any student on the Paper platform.
Equitable access to education underpins participation in the economy. If we aspire to a more balanced and inclusive society, large-scale access to academic support ought to be a high priority.