Most schools in Estonia work with an online system that improves the lives of and the communication between teachers, students, and parents. There are two different systems that schools use: eKool and Stuudium. The latter was founded by Paavo Viilup and Joel Limberg. I met up with them in a café to learn more about what Stuudium is used for, future plans, and the possibility of seeing Stuudium in other European classrooms. (The picture above can be found here.)

Hi guys, thank you for taking the time to meet me. Today I would like to talk to you about your app, Stuudium, and then, more generally, about the impact of digitalisation in the education sector in Estonia. To begin with, how did you come up with Stuudium?

Paavo: It was very practical in the beginning. The whole history of these school information systems goes back to 2002 or 2003, when people started thinking about replacing paper-based records with electronic solutions. By 2009/2010, we felt it was time for a new system. At the time, I was working in a school and the system we had was very basic and underdeveloped; which is why we started a new one from scratch. Initially, it was just an experiment, really: we wanted to see whether it could work or not. Gradually, more and more schools became interested in the concept and now we have over 150 educational institutions using the system. It’s been a very slow but steady progress over the years.

So on a very basic level, what was the core idea behind Stuudium?

Paavo: Everything that is school-related should be in one place. So when you open Stuudium, you know you have everything you need: When stuff is happening, it’s happening in Stuudium.

Paavo, I read that you still work as an English teacher. Do you use Stuudium in your school?

Paavo (laughs): Yes, I do.

Non-Estonians are not necessarily familiar with the concept of your app. Can you explain how it works?

Paavo: You can do a lot of things (laughs)! It has grown from what it was initially – a way of recording grades and sharing materials – into a very big system. So the teacher, at the beginning, would create a subject and would enter lessons, but now we also have a pretty thorough communication module that allows teachers, parents, and students to interact with each other. The users, therefore, do not need a separate e-mail list, for instance; everything that is school-connected can be done within the system.

Joel: It is basically a class forum…

Paavo: …which includes a lot of different statistical views for the school, like grades, comments, and absences. Though big, the app is also simple. In addition to the app, we also have a web-based version that is more sophisticated.

Joel: Exactly. So we started with the grades and then added more management and communication features.

How important would you assess the involvement of the parents? To what extent do students use the system?

Paavo: It is certainly one big part of our system; that parents have an overview of what their kids are doing in school. No matter how old the student is, parents are usually using the system. They are very active when their children are in elementary school, and then in high school, with increasing autonomy of the students, the parents’ interest decreases.

Joel: Students usually start using the system at the age of 8 or 9. And we noticed that every year, younger and younger students use Stuudium themselves.

8 or 9 is really young.

Joel: It is. But then, on the other hand, Stuudium is really simple. You just have to type your name and your password and you’re good to go.

Paavo: Most students have smartphones from an early age. So when they have their phone next to them, they can easily check what homework they still need to do for the next day, for example.

When you introduced Stuudium, were there parents or students that were sceptical?

Paavo: Yes, but that goes back to 2003. Students – high school students in particular – were reluctant, because they felt their parents had too much information about them. But it isn't really mentioned anymore. This is the reality that exists and I don't think anyone wants to imagine anything different. 

Joel: When we started in 2010, there were some teachers who were not convinced of the practical use of the system – that concerned 2 out of, say, 40 teachers. But that has gone away. I mean, there was a time when people were also sceptical toward the Internet.

Paavo: There are Estonian schools, though, that still don't have an electronic system. But these are usually smaller schools from the countryside. There is increasing pressure exerted by parents, however, who do not understand why school matters are not dealt with electronically. Parents want to have an idea of what is going on in school.

Joel: True. And schools sometimes don't see the problem, because they have the information that parents do not. 

Joel, you said that teachers complaining about the very existence of your system are basically non-existent anymore. How do you make sure that older teachers do not feel left behind? 

Paavo: When a school joins us, we actually provide a training. So we go to the school and offer a workshop that lasts a few hours. Then again, all schools have some kind of an IT person. I must add, though, that the basics like entering a lesson or marking grades are very simple.

Joel: There’s literally a button that says “enter lesson.”

Paavo: The great advantage is that everybody has access to information immediately. Plus, there’s less secrecy about what is going on in school. So the system basically opens up the school to every actor involved. And remember that teachers used to mark who is absent anyway; the only difference is that now they are doing it online.

But students cannot see other students’ grades, right?

Paavo: No, the students can only see their stuff, and the parents can see their children’s marks. You only have access to the material you need to have access to. Also, teachers cannot see the grades of the students in other courses. For instance, if you’re in the chemistry class, you don’t have access to the physics information. Because this actually creates bias; you see that a student gets poor marks and you make sure that you grade him similarly.

Have you ever encountered any security issues? Like a student trying to hack into the teacher’s account?

Paavo: The biggest security issues are the teachers, that’s true. People often have really bad cyber hygiene. It really comes down to stuff like people having a notebook where they write down their passwords. And this is not something only related to Stuudium as such, and we have indeed had situations in which the teacher forgot his notebook in the class, and we needed to sort the security issue. Because we log everything, we know what exactly has been changed at any certain time. This information makes it easier to find out what has been done by students, for example. So yes, the biggest problem are people, essentially.

Joel: It all comes down to the school setting. In a classroom, people mostly trust each other. There will always be some black sheep, though, who violate this trust; which is why it is important for teachers to sign out of their accounts after the lessons.

Paavo: If you have 30 kids in the classroom, then there is bound to be someone who is interested in changing the grades for the better. And then, there is an incentive for students to access the teacher’s account. But it’s not that common: you have such incidents maybe once or twice a year.

So as I understand it, there is not much you can do, other than giving the teachers some useful advice regarding cyber hygiene.

Paavo: Exactly. So when I do the training, I actually give a speech where I tell teachers how bad it is to write down your passwords. Yet there are still many who use “password notebooks” for all sorts of stuff; which is a bit frustrating.

Joel: On a high level, we provide the system and the schools run it themselves, basically. So if the administrators of the system actually discover that maybe a teacher’s account has been accessed, they can first block the access themselves, and then they can contact us to find out who is to blame.

As of now, how many people work at Stuudium?

Paavo: We have four people working on the system. We receive a lot of feedback from the schools and use that to further develop the system. So although I am an active teacher, which – by having an understanding of what is going on – helps me improve the system, we cannot come up with everything the schools need. Most of the features, in a way, are influenced by what schools want. For example, we receive many specific requests on how to do statistics. We feel that listening to the schools carefully is the only way to make Stuudium work, even though some demands are impossible to do.

Can you give an example?

Paavo: Some schools overestimate the services Stuudium can provide. Can it make life in school easier? Certainly. Can it eliminate all of the teachers’ work? Not really. In fairness though, most of the ideas are pretty reasonable. And the good thing is that we can synthesise a solution based on the feedback schools provide, which ultimately benefits everybody. Whenever we change something, every school receives the update automatically. Thus, the system is constantly in development, and there is no need for schools to install any big updates.

Are you in touch with other start-up entrepreneurs?

Paavo: Yes, to a certain degree. But education is such a different field that we mostly work with the schools. There are companies that work in the educational field; for example, we have a good relationship with an e-studybook provider who are kind of like a startup. Summing up, we work with people who are active in the educational field, but we don’t really work with random startups.

Many companies these days offer their solutions for free at the beginning and then, eventually, add fee-based premium options. Have you ever considered this path?

Joel: No. We want to keep the school stuff separate from the business stuff; which is why we don’t have ads in Stuudium. Selling premium options, like our competitor eKool does, has never been a consideration of ours.

Where does your revenue come from then?

Paavo: The school is usually owned by the municipality – that is, the local government – and that is where our revenue comes from. We don't think advertisement or premium accounts are right, because, in the end, when you look at your children’s grades, you don't want to see ads urging you to buy a piece of cake for €3.50. Who wants that?

Do you have any future projects in mind that you are moving toward to?

Paavo: In a way, the core is ready. Although we are constantly adding new features, we don't really have a big roadmap; we don't know what we want by 2020. 

Joel: We are trying to reduce the number of tools to make the system even more user-friendly. So we’re really moving from the basics toward a “how to run a school” direction.

Can you give an example of a recently added feature?

Joel: If a teacher wants to take a vacation for a week, he can simply submit his application via Stuudium to the principal. 

Are there any schools with really specific demands?

Paavo: Yes, we have schools that are extracurricular schools (arts and music schools basically), which have slightly different requirements when it comes to reducing the administrative workload.

Will we ever see Stuudium in other European classrooms?

Paavo: This is a really difficult question to answer. Theoretically, yes. Practically, however, it’s very complex, because…

Joel: …because the reason why Stuudium is so good, according to our clients, is that it fits the Estonian school system almost perfectly. Other countries have different systems, which makes Stuudium, as we use it now, unsuitable. Plus, we are a small company and we like it that way.

Paavo: Another problem is that we don't have any investor money, which would be needed to fit Stuudium to a certain school system. And even if we had the money, it would take an unknown amount of time to adjust Stuudium, because we would need to learn about how schools work in their respective system. Thus, if we wanted to expand to Germany, for example, we would need to collect information about the school system in each state. We see how complex the school system in Estonia is and we don't have any reason to believe that it’s somehow simpler elsewhere. What is more, it would need a local team, which would have to be good at IT and would also have to know the education system – a rare combination.

Joel: Of course there is the option to simply translate the system and sell it. However, it would be a bad product. We would make some money initially, but people would hate it. Moreover, we need to keep in mind that our clients are schools rather than individual customers. We are discovering that education is extremely complex. A school is like a huge company with, say, 100 teachers that are like managers, and then there are about a thousand parents who all make certain demands.

Especially if you consider that Estonia is quite small. Bigger states would probably need even more maintenance work.

Paavo: Yes, exactly. And even in Estonia you have a lot of strange differences in schools.

Joel: In theory it’s supposed to be all the same, but, in reality, it often is not.

Paavo: Also, schools in Estonia are granted a lot of leeway with their grading scales or the time of their holidays, so schools are not really uniform; it depends on the municipality, it depends on whether it’s a state-owned or a private school, etc. There’s a lot of variety.

So am I correct in assuming that no investors have approached you so far?

Paavo: We have had some contact with investors from abroad who were interested in Stuudium, but not from schools directly, which would be different. 

Joel: There have been quite a few investors who wanted to be the middlemen. But these approaches, so far, have been vague.

Paavo: The problem with investors is that, in the end, they want to monetise the students and the parents with ads. And, as we have established earlier, we don't want that. So no, I don't think that we will see Stuudium outside of Estonia anytime soon. But then again, you never know.

If you are not expanding to other countries, would you at least consider using Stuudium in, say, institutions of higher education?

Joel: There are actually kindergartens using Stuudium.

Are you serious?

Paavo (laughs): Yes, they are using it as a means of communication. The meals are especially important. So kindergartens can create these weekly and monthly plans with Stuudium, and parents can see the menu online and select the meals for their children. They can also see statistics, as in how much food was eaten.

Joel: As a country, we are – slowly but steadily – moving away from putting an overly rigid emphasis on grades. Parents also want to know what the lesson was about; they want a general feedback. The same applies to kindergartens as well.

Paavo: Generally speaking, we see that the younger the parent, the more interested they are. So the kindergartens are sort of “forced” to use Stuudium, because the parents are so interested. If they see that the kids are going hiking on Thursday, they can dress them appropriately.

Joel: There is actually a law requiring kindergartens to create those weekly plans. Because kindergartens have to type them up anyway, they might as well present them online via Stuudium. This solution, I think, is much better than putting them on a wall somewhere.

How many kindergartens are using it?

Paavo: Only ten, because we only launched the kindergarten versions last year. And kindergartens are very slow when it comes to innovations. Kindergartens in Estonia, at the moment, are going through what schools were going through in the early 2000s when an electronic system was introduced, and everyone had all kinds of irrational fears.

Without having a comparison, would you say it’s easy to establish a company in Estonia?

Paavo: Yes, very easy. You need a computer basically.

You don't even need money?

Joel: It's €150 to start a company. And it takes five minutes.

Paavo: It’s easy to start a company but not as easy to make money from it.

What about the tax situation?

Paavo: The tax system, at the moment, is very beneficial to companies. Hopefully that will continue. We do everything online.

Do you have a stack of papers anywhere?

Joel: No. It’s all electronic. 

Paavo: All the contracts we make with schools are digitally signed.

Joel: Except one.

Paavo: True. Five years ago, there was a person that demanded a piece of paper.

Do you think that a lot of people from abroad come here to start a company?

Joel: We would like to think that, but I suppose we are not quite there yet. It is growing, because of the e-Residency initiative…

Paavo: …which enables you, for instance, to start a company from Germany.

If I were to do that, what would your advice be?

Joel (laughs): Pick a good name.

Which reminds me: How did you come up with your name?

Paavo: That was a car ride we had from some school to Tallinn. It was a two-hour car ride, and someone came up with the name.


Joel: It doesn't really matter, though. When you start using it, people remember it and it’s usually fine. More seriously, if I were to give you some real advice: Do the basics, but do them right. Keep it simple. You don't have to be revolutionary. You can also just create the best version of applications that already exist; which is essentially what we did.

Paavo, Joel, many thanks for the interview and all the best for the future!