Roman, everyone is already used to the fact that Simpals “invests” in sports, in marathons, in bright sports events. You bother the first 1% of haters on the weekend to drive through the square, 99% are those who run and those who support you. But people know less that you’ve started to “invest” in education in Moldova. I'm speaking about the project Studii.md. Shall we talk about it? When have you launched it?

In the past year.

A short definition of the project?

Electronic grade book and school diary. For teachers, parents and students.

It seems you are not the first... I’ve heard about such projects in Moldova …

We’re really not the first in the market. But at the moment when we’ve started to deal with this, everyone else has already died out. Everyone has come with ready-made solutions. The main problem was that they weren’t adapted to the reality of the Moldavian school. Do you know what we had been told in one of the schools, which has later became one of the project “pilots”: “You’re already the fifth who comes to us with such a project, but if you’re ready to listen to us and adjust the platform for us, you’ll be the first...”.

This is how you became the first?

I think yes. At the beginning of the last year, we started pilots in three lyceums - Mircea Eliade, Puskin and Spiru Haret.

How was the school year? By the way, have you got a summer vacation?

We were engagedthe whole year in the adaptation of the platform. Each lyceum had its own specifics, we had to speak with everyone. And there was no summer vacation. Students go to sea, but schools continue to work, there were a lot of additional work on the software related to the transfer of students from one grade to another, this was the first year “full” of work of Studii.md.

The second year of work of Studii.md... Were there more connected educational institutions or something fundamentally new in the platform?

Now, in September, we’ve launched the project for the second time. The novelty of the project is a mobile application, primarily due to notifications. Parents often complained that they forgot or didn’t have enough time to look at the children's grades every day, and a month passed in this way. Push notifications come immediately, no one now misses anything.

We’ve expanded the list of connections. Heritage and Da Vinci have been connected. The list of connections also includes 20 public schools.

It sounds impressive - a “list of connections”. But you have the same platform. Logged in, connected.

No, the connection is not automatic. These are personal data, especially personal data of children. Gathering all the contacts of parents, students, school administration, manual check and connection is a lot of painstaking work. To make clear for you, a call centre works for Studii.md round the clock.

So, you’ve just brought me closer to my favourite question. Where is the money? What is the monetization of the project?

A connection fee will be charged from private schools. More than reasonable ones. For public schools, theStudii.md project is free of charge. We don’t expect that the investments in Studii.md will pay off. More precisely, we don’t expect that they will pay off with money. It’s much more important for us to make a contribution to the education system of the country. Consider it’s just a very long investment, we want the increased level of education to impact the country in general, and the business climate in particular.

It sounds great, but be realistic. Education cannot be improved based on the electronic school diary only. Well, the student will get a “belt” for an F, but this is not enough...

Therefore Studii.md is only the first step. The next step is online learning. We take the ready-made EdX platform, improves the system and give all Moldovan colleges the opportunity to upload their courses. 

In this way we want to solve several problems at once.

Moldavian content. It’s clear that there are enough online courses in the world, but each country has its own education system and we want Moldova to have online lessons corresponding to the curriculum approved by the Ministry of Education.

Children get sick, especially in the lower grades. I have a child of such age. If the child is sick, the parents enter the parental chat to find out the homework. But task is task, and the lesson with the teacher is skipped. When all the lessons are digitized, the student will be able to watch the missed lesson at home, there will not be such an acute problem if classes are inevitably missed.

Another case is Chisinau and the districts of Moldova. It’s not a secret that the level of teaching in Chisinau is often higher, the reasons are clear. When the lessons are digitized, not only students from all over Moldova, but also teachers from districts will be able to watch them. This can be an analogue for them of continuing education courses. I’ll add that there is also Transnistria. In the version with online courses, the Moldovan standard of education will also be available on the other bank of the Nistru river, which will not hinder integration. Romanian-language content may be accompanied by subtitles in Russian.

All this will be available on edu.studii.md

Who will shoot so much content? What budgets are needed?

There are grantors, there is Ministry of Education... Our task is to provide the technical opportunity so that there is where to post content and make it conveniently to use it...

Now I take off my hat ... I do respect Simpals …

I haven’t yet told you about our work on the automation of the reports for the Ministry of Education. The “manual” mode takes a lot of time ffrom teachers to prepare reports, and from the Ministry to process them…

Roma, you do terrible things. I remember how in some grade we drowned the grade book,  and life began from scratch. Goodbye, good old days … 

Pavel Zingan