About SPLAT-maths

About SPLAT-maths

The SPLAT-maths company provides STEM-based educational programs to children in preschool, Foundation year, and early primary years. Our programs build capacity in Australia’s long-term productivity through STEM literacy in the early years. Our team of transdisciplinary STEM-education specialists, learning scientists, developmental psychologists and digital experts have harnessed research-driven pedagogical expertise to create innovative, interactive programs for children. We are based in Canberra, Australia.

Our Mission

SPLAT-maths’ mission is to make pedagogically rich and technologically innovative STEM-based educational programs for children across the early years of schooling. Our programs will be authentically accessible for every child—regardless of gender, cultural heritage, socio-economic status (SES) or experience of disability—and will actively include those children in vulnerable, geographically-isolated and non-traditional-learning communities who have often been excluded from STEM education opportunities.

Our Vision

SPLAT-maths’ vision is for our learning programs to spark children’s engagement and interest in STEM, improve their spatial reasoning skills, and lead to a significant and substantial national increase in STEM literacy in the early years.

A Brief History of SPLAT-maths

In 2018, the SPLAT-maths team undertook the very first Early Learning STEM Australia (ELSA) Pilot project, with funding provided by the Australian Government Department of Education (DE). The Pilot featured a suite of play-based digital apps for children, as well as an Educator app and a Families app, and more than 100 classroom activities that children could engage in—ensuring a healthy balance between digital play and physical play. Tasked with focussing on engagement, the ELSA Pilot engaged 100 preschool services across Australia, with a total of 400 educators and more than 3,800 children taking part. During 2018, children’s engagement with the digital apps exceeded expectations, with more than 43,000 sessions and 10,000 hours logged, and a staggering 88,000 items of content created by children.

The success of the 2018 Pilot led DE to extend the project and fund another ELSA Pilot in 2019—this time with a focus on children’s learning progressions. The 2019 Pilot engaged 111 preschool services, 200 educators and more than 4,300 children. The children’s apps were updated so they could monitor and capture children’s Bounded Learning Progressions (BLPs) in detailed and sophisticated ways, without the need for formal assessment, while the children simply played the digital activities. This data was then transmitted to the Educator app in the form of clear ‘I Can’ achievements—providing insights about each child’s progress. Data from 2019 revealed continuous learning attainment by children throughout the year—irrespective of individual differences.

In 2020, DE extended the project again so that our team could undertake a focussed research project to determine the efficacy of the learning and engagement within the program, as well as the impact the program has on children’s STEM development. The 2020 Research Project involved a randomised control trial (RCT) with approximately 140 early learning centres and 1200 children across Australia. Data from the project revealed significant and substantial performance gains in both STEM learning and numeracy for those children who participated in the intervention. This included a relative growth in STEM learning of approximately 12% (BAU) compared to 38% (ELSA Program); and a relative increase in numeracy of approximately 28% (BAU) and 56% (ELSA Program) during the RCT.

After three highly successful years running ELSA in a pilot and research phase, the SPLAT-maths team worked with DE to make the program commercially available to all preschools, kindergartens and Foundation Year classes across the country in 2021.