TareasPlus, a US-based education start-up, has received $1.8m in seed funding from distance-learning provider Academic Partnerships (AP).
The San Francisco-based firm will use the funding to expand and improve its Spanish-language online learning facilities, which are aimed at supporting primary, secondary, and further education students throughout Latin America.
The free-to-access content-on-demand online videos specialise in mathematics, but also cover some sciences. TareasPlus hopes that by delivering unlimited access to online tutoring that is specifically developed for Spanish speaking students, it will overcome educational barriers in Latin America.
“Right now, more than half of students in Latin America do not develop the minimum skills needed to function in mathematics,” said TareasPlus founder and chief executive officer Hernan Jaramillo. “One key reason these skills are falling behind in Latin America is due to resources. 88% of primary schools in Latin America don’t have science labs, and 40% have no libraries. The students and teachers are bright and hard workers, but many just lack the resources to make the grade.”
Academic Partnerships, which has partnered with a number of state universities in the United States to deliver online higher education, is hopeful that TareasPlus’ online platform will assist Spanish-language students.
Randy Best, founder and chairman at AP, said: “Academic Partnerships is deeply committed to achieving an equality of access to quality education for students around the globe. We support TareasPlus’ mission to use technology to help students all over the world deepen their comprehension of math and science.”
This article was originally written by our sister publication Global University Venturing.