Online tutoring platform Cluey Learning does the maths, prepares to list

Cluey Learning is planning to expand into the university and international student markets as it prepares to list on the ASX after raising $30m.

Tech investor Alex Waislitz. Picture: David Geraghty

Cluey Learning, the education technology business backed by Afterpay investors Alex Waislitz and Duncan Seville, is planning to expand into the university and international student markets as it prepares to list on the Australian Securities Exchange after raising $30m.

Cluey’s online adaptive learning platform matches students from kindergarten to Year 12 with private tutors who conduct tailored online sessions, with targeted learning matched to their needs, delivered via video, virtual whiteboards and other digital content.

Cluey collects more than 100,000 data points per 60-minute learning session, which is used for quality assurance to improve tutor and student matching and to track a student’s learning.

Eighty-two per cent of Cluey parents report an improvement in their child’s grades.

Cluey also offers in-house exper­tise to design, develop and execute tailored education pro­grams and technology solutions and has its own independent education advisory board.

“There has been strong growth and adoption of online learning support globally,” Cluey’s advisory board member Ian Young said. “Tutoring and test prep is a large component of this. Our research supported by external research such as the Grattan Institute validates the fact that individual or small-group tutoring is a highly effective means of delivering targeting learning to school students.”

Yet Australia’s tutoring and test prep market remains highly fragmented with a heavy reliance on traditional face-to-face tutoring. This is despite it being a sizeable and rapidly growing market.

Ninety-two per cent of Australian school students (3.6 million students) are using or considering tutoring or some form of educational support.

Dr Young said the COVID-induced move to remote learning this year had exacerbated the gap that existed between higher-performing students and those who were struggling. “This poses an increasing challenge for schools to try to address the diverse learning needs of individual students at a time when teachers are already under extreme pressures,” he said.

A Grattan Institute report released in June recommends a $1.25bn national catch-up strategy in the wake of the pandemic, with $1.1bn invested in a small-group tuition program, employing 100,000 tutors to help one million students across six months.

“Evidence shows small-group tuition quickly boosts student achievement, especially for disadvantaged students … Where existing technologies have rigorously been shown to work — for example online tutoring … — they should be used,” the report says.

However it says the expanded use of digital technologies should be tested in coming years, as “it is too early to rapidly expand the use of digital tools … because there is still little information on which digital approaches are successful”.

It recommends small-group tuition as a program with a track record of success, “where implementation at scale is relatively easy”, and a multiplier effect.

Last month the Victorian government announced a $250m tut­or­ing package, hiring 4100 tutors to help deliver small-group learning to 200,000 students.

Cluey raised $20m in Series B funding this year from fund managers Milford and Acorn as well as Mr Saville’s Allectus Group and Mr Waislitz’s Thorney Group.

It has hired Bell Potter and Canaccord Genuity for an initial public offering to raise $30m, giving the company a market capitalisation on listing early next month of more than $140m.

Cluey is expanding its services into National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy test preparation, small-group learning and extra-curricular services such as coding. It is also examining new channels to market through school partnerships and adjacent markets such as universities and TAFE, international markets and machine learning.

“We invested $30m and two years building our technology, content and infrastructure to be able to deliver the Cluey proposition at scale,’’ chief executive Mark Rohald said. “We now have the added advantage of being able to use learning analytics and large amounts of data to continuously optimise our service.”

Cluey has achieved strong growth this year with over 52,000 tutoring sessions in the first quarter of the 2021 financial year, up from 37,500 sessions the previous quarter and over 5200 active students and 620 active tutors.