EduFocal Academy is now on the App Store

Today is a big one for us. EduFocal Academy is now on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. It is a PEP preparation app built in Jamaica, for Jamaican children, and it is designed around one idea: the practice a child needs should also be the thing they want to open.

Here is what is inside, and why we built it the way we did.

Practice that feels like a game

The truth about PEP prep is that children do not lack questions. They lack a reason to keep going. So the app feels like a game. Every answer earns XP, levels climb, streaks build day by day, and Owlbert, our owl, cheers every win. Underneath the game is serious practice: more than 25,000 published questions from Grade 2 to CSEC, aligned to the Jamaican curriculum, with all five PEP subjects for Grades 4 to 6, Ability Test included.

The quiz adapts as a child works. It watches how they are doing and picks the next question at their level, not a random shuffle, so a struggling student is not discouraged and a strong one is not bored. Get one wrong and a tap on Explain it to me gives a step by step explanation written for a ten year old, starting from the answer they picked.

Ability Test figures that are always right

Non-verbal reasoning is where many candidates lose marks. Rotations, reflections, sequences and folded cube nets are hard to teach and easy to get wrong in a question bank. Every figure in the app is generated and checked by code, so the answer key is correct by construction. There are more than 570 Ability Test items so far and the bank keeps growing.

Lessons you can touch

More than 110 interactive lessons let students sort, match, tap and solve their way through a topic, with Owlbert explaining as they go. Each lesson earns XP when it is finished, and the new writing boxes save as a child types and can hand back teacher style feedback on what they wrote.

Performance Tasks, marked with feedback

PEP is not only multiple choice. The Performance Task papers are where marks are won and lost. The app includes PEP style Performance Tasks in which students read the sources, show their working and write the extended response, then receive marks and feedback part by part, in the style of the real examination.

Animated readers

New this month: stories, poems, information texts, a recipe and an Anansi tale, each with scenes that move, tap to reveal vocabulary and a quiz that marks itself. Comprehension practice that does not feel like a worksheet.

Learning that keeps going without data

Data runs out. Learning should not. The app works fully offline. Quizzes, lessons and Performance Tasks continue with no signal, every answer is saved on the phone, and everything syncs the moment a connection returns. Students sign in with Face ID and pick up exactly where they left off.

Motivation is a feature

There are 77 badges to earn, a weekly leaderboard against students across Jamaica, and head to head quiz duels with friends where the winner takes the XP. Prize campaigns reward the students who keep showing up with Giftme smart cards, and when a child wins, it shows up right in the app and a parent gets the card by text.

For parents: a report card that talks

Parents get a report card that speaks plainly. Mastery topic by topic, what to practise next, and a PEP readiness read, all built from the work their child actually did rather than a textbook average. It is the same report that is on the web, now in a pocket.

Get the app

EduFocal Academy is free to download on the App Store, with monthly and yearly subscriptions for full access. Existing EduFocal Academy accounts sign straight in. Grades 4 to 6 are covered today and CSEC subjects are growing. Android is next.

Download EduFocal Academy on the App Store

If you have a child in Grades 4 to 6, let them try it tonight and tell us what they think. This was built in Jamaica by a small team, for the exam that shapes so many of our children's paths, and hearing from you is how it gets better.