Google has granted USD $1.5 million to the non-profit arm of Siyavula Education to provide free access to its maths practice service for 150 000 South African students and a further 150 000 in Nigeria. Siyavula started the process by announcing its #1MillionMaths Challenge to kick start learner preparation for the end of year exams.

Siyavula is inviting South African learners to complete 1 million maths questions on its digital learning platform in the month of October 2017. For the #1MillionMaths Challenge, the NGO will provide free access to its premium online maths practice service for all Grade 8-12 learners in the country.

“Both Google and Siyavula harness technology to make information and education more accessible. We want to demonstrate how powerful this can be by providing learners with access to this tool during their preparation for exams, ” says Nick Cain, Google.org’s Program Manager for Education.

“Siyavula has launched the #1MillionMaths Challenge to show the reach and scale that technology enables, as well as the incredible impact that practice can have when learning maths,” says Mark Horner, CEO of Siyavula. “We’ve designed our software to adapt to each learner’s level so they practise smarter, not just harder.”





The #1MillionMath Challenge was opened by Dr Mphahlele, who completed the first math question to kick off the Challenge counter.

Grade 12 learners preparing for exams will be able to practice self-marking exam questions for Mathematics Paper 1 and Paper 2. In addition to learning and preparing for exams, learners will receive various prizes and rewards from Siyavula such as data, mobile phones and Google Play vouchers during October 2017.

150 000 learners from low fee public schools who participate in this challenge will be eligible to receive a Google.org-sponsored scholarship that grants them access to Siyavula maths practice for all of 2018.

To join the #1MillionMaths challenge, prepare for exams and stand a chance to receive one of the 150 000 Google-sponsored subscriptions for 2018, learners can visit the Siyavula website to register for a trial account and redeem the following access code: siyavula-one-million-maths. This code will grant them premium access until the 15th of December 2017 and allow them to participate in the challenge. Prizes, leaderboards and more information will be announced on the Siyavula Facebook page throughout the month of October 2017. We invite learners to join the Siyavula Facebook page to monitor our progress and stay up to date.

Edited by Fundisiwe Maseko

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