"Supérate con Fundación BBVA" Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards 2024- Nominated

In response to the confinement caused by the COVID-19 health emergency, the majority of countries in the Latin American region, including Mexico, opted for distance education. This region became the world's most heavily impacted by remote learning. According to UNICEF estimates, by March 2021, around 114 million students had already been affected by the total or partial closure of schools in the region. While the region already had significant educational gaps and challenges before the pandemic, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB, 2020) estimated that these gaps deepened as a result of the pandemic.

As a result, at least 1.2 million girls and boys would be excluded from their educational systems in Latin America. Additionally, 2.7 million young people between the ages of 18 and 23 would be left out not only from the education system but also from the labor market. According to the IDB (2020), learning losses would affect even the vulnerable middle class and exacerbate their effects on the poorest population.

In Mexico, according to the Centro de Estudios Espinosa Yglesias (2021), the effects of the pandemic on the education sector could vary depending on the region of the country. Under a scenario of no effectiveness, where the distance learning model does not substitute face-to-face learning at all, the immediate cost would imply an average national setback of 1 year, slightly lower for the central region of the country (0.98 years), and higher for the southern region (1.14 years). In the long term, the setback would widen to 2.14 years nationwide, 1.5 years in the central region, and 3 years in the southern region.

In response to the above scenario, the BBVA México Foundation (FBBVA) analyzed the relevance of designing a strategy that would address the educational gaps reinforced by the pandemic. Together with strategic allies such as Mexicanos Primero and the Technological Institute of Higher Studies of Monterrey (ITESM), the FBBVA opted to strengthen the tools it had at that time to create a new initiative: “Supérate con BBVA platform”.

Supérate is a technological platform that seeks to promote the academic, psychological and socioemotional development of middle and high school students. This is achieved through online learning that allows students to self-evaluate and develop competencies for academic success. Supérate takes students by the hand to know themselves, understand the results and develop skills in formative routes, through evaluations. Similarly, the platform allows advisors to reinforce their skills to provide support and work hand in hand in the formation of students. The goal is to improve the cognitive and socioemotional skills of people with educational levels equivalent to middle and high school through a digital tool to contribute to school continuity, regularization and social mobility.

The Supérate Platform also includes personalized training paths based on the areas for improvement identified in the diagnostics. These paths establish learning objectives for each topic, covering the four dimensions of talent. Assessment tools are also provided to measure students' progress, along with a resource library that allows them to deepen their learning. We open the Supérate Platform to the general public in order to expand its reach and benefit a greater number of students in Mexico. Opening the platform to the public will enable more students to access learning resources, strengthen their skills, and complete their educational cycles, thereby contributing to their continued participation in the education system and their overall development.

It is important to highlight that the Supérate Platform is completely free and not limited by a license or maximum number of users. This allows us to reach a large number of students and ensure that everyone has access to the resources and benefits offered by the platform. Additionally, the platform is intended to be a tool for teachers and schools, providing support and monitoring through virtual areas.

Furthermore, we seek to establish partnerships with schools for the follow-up area, enabling teachers and schools to provide closer and more personalized support to the youth using the platform. This collaboration between the platform and schools ensures greater effectiveness in the learning process and student development.

Our project includes two implementation models. Firstly, we aim to scale the platform in collaboration with schools, integrating it as a complementary tool in the curriculum. This model would allow us to reach a large number of students and ensure greater adoption by educational institutions.

Additionally, we seek to implement a second model where the platform is completely open, allowing any student in the required grade level to apply and benefit from the resources and tools offered by the platform. This approach guarantees equitable access to education and would enable reaching students from diverse realities and educational contexts.

In 2023 we developed with the Center for Educational and Social Studies, an evaluation of the impact of Supérate on cognitive and noncognitive skills of 1st year high school students. The results of the impact evaluation suggest that the Platform improved the cognitive and noncognitive skills of 1st year high school students (from public and private schools), thereby reducing their educational gap. Students who completed the Supérate Route scored 4.1 points higher than their peers who did not. Based on the evaluation results, we noted that the main predictor of grade improvement for the treatment group was the time they dedicated to the Platform; thus, those who invested more of their time benefited from an improvement in both academic and socioemotional indicators.

In 2023 with the Supérate Platform more than 71 thousand students received feedback, more than 80 thousand new users created and scored 4.1 points progress for students who took the formative pathway. Our goal for 2024 is to reach at least 100 thousand students and our goal for 2025 is to impact at least 300 thousand students.

Based on the great results and the experience gained through the last year, “Supérate con Fundacion BBVA Platform” is planning to extend its reach to elementary public schools through 6 states and reach all possible public schools in Mexico, prioritizing students from vulnerable backgrounds.