What we heard when we asked why

In the third term of 2025, teachers in a pilot we ran in KwaZulu-Natal began using kolab. less than they had in the first half of the year. Engagement on the app fell in the term when we most wanted momentum.

We could have answered with a new feature or a bigger push. We asked first. In the week of 8 September 2025, two experienced local education leaders spoke to teachers, heads of department and principals across 21 schools, in person and by phone, and reported back to our team. We commissioned that exercise because we did not trust our own guess about the cause.

The first finding concerned the content itself. None of the negative responses related to its quality. Teachers described it as excellent and comprehensive, and several singled out the material on phonics, guided reading and shared reading. The problems sat around the content.

Teachers already work from the lesson plans and workbooks their department supplies, and those come first, as they should. kolab. arrived as one more thing in a crowded week, and teachers told the consultants they felt stretched across several programmes at once. Term 3 carries one of the heaviest loads of curriculum coverage in the school year, and examinations take over Term 4. A resource that looks like an extra obligation struggles in both.

Data access varied from school to school. Some principals let teachers use school data for kolab.; others expected them to use their own, at home. Our own report on the pilot puts it this way: expecting teachers to use personal data for professional development is neither reasonable nor equitable.

School leadership mattered most. The consultants found that principals and heads of department were not driving use in a consistent way, and without that, use depended on individual motivation, which wears thin in the third term. Both men were firm on one point: if principals do not put a programme on their own agenda, it will not succeed.

We changed several things in response. We began working with school leadership and talking with schools about kolab. as a companion that saves preparation time. Our field facilitator started taking a dedicated Wi-Fi router to school visits and workshops, so teachers could use the app on site without spending their own data. We visited schools more often, and in October we launched certificates to recognise teachers who kept completing modules.

Engagement improved in Term 4, during examination season. I cannot say which of those changes did the work, since we made them together, and I would be wary of any partner who claimed to know. The router is also a stopgap. The app is not data-free, connectivity for the schools we work with comes through routers that funders support, and our report says this part needs a more sustainable answer as the programme grows.

A funder adding a programme to a school is adding to a teacher's week. One question I would put to any education partner, including us, is what they found the last time engagement dropped, and whether they asked teachers why before deciding what to do about it.