Company type | Private Company |
---|---|
Industry | Education |
Founded | 12 August 2012 |
Founders | Jill Snape and Scott Tonges |
Headquarters | Brisbane , Australia |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Elizabeth McMillan (CEO) |
Products | Teaching resources, classroom solutions, and educator apps |
Website |
www |
Teach Starter is an online educational resources company that offers a subscription service to access teaching materials for educators. The company was founded by Jill Snape and Scott Tonges in 2012 [1] and has since expanded to provide unit and lesson plans, activities, games and curriculum aligned worksheets for kindergarten to Year 6. [2] [3] It is currently headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, [4] with an office in Austin, Texas, [5] and operates internationally with a presence in the Australian, UK and US education markets. [6] [3]
Teach Starter began with a poster Scott Tonges created for his wife, classroom teacher Jill Snape. [2] After receiving positive feedback from other teachers they launched an email newsletter, [7] and began creating additional resources, eventually launching a website with over 200 resources in January 2013. [8] In 2020, Teach Starter briefly offered its resources for free as part of a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, later citing the move of classrooms online as creating a growth spurt for the business. [5] In 2020, former Dictionary.com CEO Elizabeth McMillan [9] was appointed as the Teach Starter CEO. [10] [6] As of 2022 the company had approximately 60 employees worldwide. [11]
On 23rd February 2023, Tes Global (publishers of the TES magazine), announced they had acquired Teach Starter to compliment their teaching resources platform. [12]
Teach Starter offers a free and paid subscription plan that allows access to a range of downloadable teaching resources, lesson plans, games and other online resources. The website’s content is arranged using multiple categories such as grade level, subject or resource type. [13] It provides resources that are aligned to curriculums including the Australian National Curriculum, Common Core State Standards in America, TEKS in Texas, and the National Curriculum for England. [14] Specific curriculums for example the English Science Curriculum areas KS1, KS2 Lower and KS2 can be found via a curriculum search page. [15]
In 2020 Teach Starter was reported to have over 780,000 accounts worldwide, 140,000 pages of teaching resources, and 35,000 podcast subscribers. [5] It was also reported in the same year that 70 per cent of Australian Primary Schools and approximately 58 per cent of Australian primary school teachers used the platform. [6]
In 2020, Teach Starter founders Jill Snape and Scott Tonges were named in the Queensland Business Monthly Top 20 Under 40 list. [6]
Teach Starter was a finalist in the 2022 Women in Digital Awards in the category of Employer of the Year. [16]
Holon IQ has listed Teach Starter on its annual list of 50 most promising EdTech startups in Australia and New Zealand each year from 2020 to 2022. [17]