Is public education increasing inequality? | Felix Ohswald | TEDxAthens

Even though most of people support public education it has often limited access and is not always as inclusive as it should be. Felix Ohswald will reflect about the importance of public-private partnerships for the future of education.

Felix Ohswald is the Co-Founder and CEO of GoStudent, the Vienna-based digital learning platform that provides tailored and high quality video-based tuition to primary, secondary and college-aged students. In November 2020, Felix was featured in the Forbes “30 under 30” list.

In 2015, GoStudent started out as a homework chat service, managed via WhatsApp. At first, it involved support that Felix provided for his younger brother’s classmates. Felix quickly became the go-to expert for the students and the volume of messages he was receiving kept growing. It was clear that there was a systemic lack of support for these students, so he decided to address this issue and inspire a passion for learning to the students that matched his own.

What started as a homework chat group evolved into a revolutionary 1:1 tutoring platform, where students receive tailored support by being paired with the best teacher for them, regardless of geographical location.

[diquepiques]

It is funny that his business is actually making enormous profits from education. It should never be an activity in which some people (shareholders) are able to profit from something. Furthermore Gostudent actually contributes to stronger inequality as only few parents are able to afford the private tutoring. In stead of truely supporting schools they are strengthening a poor system...

[larawrightt]

I wish that he had touched on how/ if public-private partnerships differ from charter schools which have been ineffective in the US. I am also curious to know if this is simply one step further in implementing a neoliberal educational policy.