Company: Life Ninja Education
Founder(s): Helen Robinson, Trevor Wills and Tom Bailey
Website: https://lifeninja.net/
Description: Life Ninja Education create educational apps for children, teachers, and parents.
Life Ninja Education was co-founded by Helen Robinson, Trevor Wills and Tom Bailey in 2019. The organisation are based in Middlesbrough and have grown from a team of three to seven in the space of two years.
The first of Life Ninja Education’s educational apps was the ‘Help Me Series’ which covers GCSE English Literature and has a range of questions to challenge student knowledge. The business have partnered with Multiply Music to develop and create a Zap range, including Zap Maths, released in March 2020 and Zap English to be released summer of 2021. These apps cover the entire KS1 and KS2 curriculum.
In May 2020, Life Ninja Education were successful in obtaining funding from Innovate UK, which enabled them to develop an innovative home learning hub with the aim to democratise education. This product is entirely free to schools and is in the pilot stage with a number of schools across the U.K.
Gaining this funding was a huge achievement for Life Ninja Education, being only one of five businesses in the North-East and the only one in Middlesbrough.
The business have developed a new and exciting network that includes their own apps, Message Ninja and Learning Ninja. Message Ninja is used by schools as a communication hub between school and parents, and can also be used as a hub for internal school communications.
The app is original because it enables parents to book appointments with teachers, make payments, fundraise, and create events with digital consent from parents and carers. Learning Ninja is a one-stop-shop home learning solution that enables communication between school and parents, including reading records, live quizzes, tournaments, and students can earn coins to use on building their own avatar. The beauty of the system is that all the apps work alongside one another.
Life Ninja Education’s focus so far has been schools in the North-East, partly due to the co-founders living locally, but also 30,000 children in the area are living in poverty. Their goal is to ensure that all children have the same opportunities – the innovative Home Learning Hub engaging parents around the life and learning of their child and being completely free to schools and parents to use.
Future plans for Life Ninja Education include the release of Zap English in summer 2021 and Zap Science later in the year. The business is also hoping to work with some graduates from the University of Teesside in their creation of a Physical Education app.
Additionally, Life Ninja are also in discussion with the Lebanese Smart School project, who have developed a curriculum based on the official Syrian curriculum tailored for the Lebanese refugees and require a platform in which to deliver the content. It is hoped that the use of the platform internationally will launch Life Ninja’s products into the Middle East market.
