Stephanie Rich contributed to this story.

During his career as an education student at McGill University, Philip Cutler has seen first-hand how inequalities create learning gaps among students. After researching the education technology market, he concluded that no commercial solution can serve all students fairly and adequately.

That’s why Cutler and co-founder CTO and COO Roberto Cipriani founded Paper, an educational assistance system that aims to make a difference in educational equity and help more students succeed. .

EdTech companies contract with school districts for a fixed price to provide unlimited 24/7 online tutoring and a suite of educational support tools. The company’s B2B model allows it to offer its services free of charge to students, families or teachers, allowing all students to compete fairly.

Based in Montreal, our academic support platform operates throughout the United States, especially along the California coast. With over 2,000 professional, multilingual teachers, we teach over 200 subjects across North America to approximately 2.5 million students of all grades.

Our tutoring team is made up of undergraduates, doctoral candidates, and teachers who are dedicated to promoting learning and professional development. When not working, these tutors review other people’s sessions and provide feedback.

A key difference between Paper and other EdTech companies is its reluctance to target consumers directly, the industry’s most common business model.

“Charging students’ families just doesn’t align with our values,” says Cutler. “We will not consider that model because it increases the opportunity gap faced by students from low-income families and only provides resources to those who can afford it.“

Era of digital education

Evidence suggests that disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have exacerbated existing inequalities within remote learning. As the learning gap widens, the need for academic support has reached an all-time high.

The global tutoring market has grown rapidly since the post-pandemic recovery and is expected to reach $218.1 billion by 2027, according to ReportLinker. This is his 76% increase from 2020.

Now, students are returning to campus, but some states still have problems accessing laptops, the internet, and other devices that existed before the outbreak.

“Before the pandemic, about 60% of school districts in the US were providing devices to their students,” said Cutler. “Today, that number is about 99%.”

But Canadian provincial education authorities have yet to follow the US precedent of investing heavily in tutoring to address learning losses as part of the nationwide educational response to the pandemic.

Cutler said Montreal’s English Montreal School Board (EMSB) only provides laptops and other digital devices to students who have a demonstrated need.

This continues to create educational inequalities 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 can’t buy a solution like PAPER until our students say they want technology. The reality is, they want technology.”

Today, the company is looking to develop beyond tutoring solutions and is promoting product diversification. New services for 2022-2023 include Paper Math, College & Career Support and PaperLive, a new video streaming service that offers free after-school programming to all students on the Paper platform.

Equitable access to education underpins economic participation. Massive access to academic support should be a priority if we are to strive for a more balanced and inclusive society.