The origin story of Twinkl has a familiar ring to it: A couple with a vision, toiling away in their spare bedroom with dreams of taking a killer product to market.
Fast-forward 12 years, and the educational resources platform has unspooled from its initial customer base in England to now serve 200 countries worldwide — with Japan as one of its focal markets in Asia.
Twinkl was founded upon a self-explanatory motto: “We help those who teach.” Its resources cover a wide range of disciplines, from English and computing to art and physical education. And while much of its content has been built around the British education system, many of those resources can double-up as English-language study materials. Alongside more ad hoc English study tools, such as phonics and alphabet practice, resource flexibility could be the key to unlocking the door to Japan.
Even before the pandemic, Japan’s ESL (English as a second language) teaching market was in rude health: English teaching has long been one of the most common jobs among Japan’s approximately 1.7 million foreign workers, especially for native speakers. According to their websites, major employers Aeon and ECC have more than 250 and 180 schools across the country, respectively. However, strict border pandemic protocols have made it difficult for schools to recruit new foreign teachers since spring 2020. Even the government-subsidized Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme witnessed a steep decline with the number of candidates believed to have fallen to around 4,000 in 2021 (including reappointments) compared with the 5,761 registered in fiscal 2019.
But there remains a clear demand for English education. Japan’s mid-January standardized university entrance exam has an annual participation of about 500,000 hopefuls, 99% of whom were assessed on their English proficiency last year.
Furthermore, starting in April 2020, English education was made mandatory at elementary schools for third-graders and above. This was likely a response to Japan’s poor English proficiency ranking in Asia the previous year: it finished 27th out of 29 countries surveyed, ahead of only Laos and Tajikistan.
This suggests that the quantity of English teachers hasn’t always guaranteed quality lessons. English education resources in public and at eikaiwa (English conversation) schools are often designed in-house to meet the specific objectives of a given course, with few auxiliary add-ons.
Resources can also remain in use for years with little or no updates — with some practice dialogues referring to anachronistic items like pagers and DVD players — and often need teacher guidance to have any real practical application outside the classroom. Moreover, English teaching companies in Japan often operate on a revolving-door model of recruitment, with willingness deemed more important than experience in the hiring process — a fact that highlights the importance of having good resources at a teacher’s disposal.
A team of teachers
Twinkl doesn’t market itself as a wholesale replacement for the teaching materials already in use — though it can function for standalone learners — but rather offers a continuous update of complementary side dishes to accompany teaching frameworks. In England, Twinkl runs alongside the national curriculum, and the primary view to Japan is to have it coordinate with the areas of study taught at ESL schools.
“Everyone who works on the design team at Twinkl is either a former teacher, or is still teaching, and working at Twinkl as a secondary job,” says Lian McGillycuddy, manager of Twinkl’s Japan team. “They make resources that teach the same concepts that students will be learning at the same time.”
This process applies to creating resources for Japan’s ESL market, too. McGillycuddy and her team communicate resource ideas to the design team, based on what the Japanese education system expects of students at a given level, after which the in-house illustrators and content writers make the vision a reality.
Twinkl has demonstrated an ability to expand operations over the past decade, growing exponentially from its humble 2010 origins. Now in its 12th year, it has more than 12 million sign-ups worldwide, including 2.8 million new additions in the past 12 months alone. Twinkl creates an average of 13,000 resources each month, with the past 12 witnessing over 268 million resource downloads, partially fueled by a huge uptake in pandemic-enforced home schooling.
In spite of these figures, Twinkl’s presence in Japan is still small, where it competes with other such online learning platforms as Lingua, Duolingo and Let’s Learn English. There are currently only 18,550 registered users in the country, including free members and subscribers.
“We are trying to show Japan how popular Twinkl is, but because we don’t have as big a presence in Japan yet, it’s a little more difficult,” says McGillycuddy. “But I think if we keep showing how good the resources are, the word will spread.”
McGillycuddy is hoping high-profile collaborations can help Twinkl’s expansion. Current collaborations include cartoons “Peppa Pig” and “Numberblocks”, both of which appear on TV screens in Japan and are aimed at the largest segment of Twinkl learners: children.
She adds that the company is currently looking to collaborate with Japanese television shows, too. “It would be great for Japanese people to see something that’s familiar to them in our resources.”
Twinkl provides more than 40,000 resources for free once a user registers.
Create your own resources
Twinkl also has ambassadors scattered throughout the country, such as Michelle Nomura, an English tutor at ABC Club in Fukuoka who started using the platform in 2016.
“Twinkl has helped me a lot, not only for my lessons, but also for personal use raising my bilingual daughters,” she says. Nomura cites Twinkl Create, a program that allows users to design their own resources, the Twinkl app, which features in-built 3D and augmented reality functionalities, and Twinkl eBooks as resources that “really make life easier.”
Lea Takaiwa, a teacher at English Adventure Academy in Shiga Prefecture, echoes Nomura’s sentiment. “Twinkl is really an amazing educational site for English learners and teachers,” she says. “It is introducing me to different places, countries, cultures and many more that I can share with my students so they will be familiar with the outside world.”
But while Twinkl’s most obvious application in Japan is to the ESL market, it’s reluctant to pigeonhole itself. Part of the Japan team’s responsibilities is to localize resources that can be used by educators in the country’s public schooling system. Increasing Twinkl awareness through weekly newsletters and social media posts in Japanese is integral to achieving this ambition.
“(Twinkl) has been received very well,” says McGillycuddy. “We’re just trying to get the word out to more Japanese teachers and parents that we are here.”
For more information, visit www.twinkl.jp.
The basics of Twinkl
Subscriptions start at ¥880 per month, alongside annual subscriptions at 13 months for the price of 12, which includes unlimited access to Twinkl’s 830,000-plus resources. Users can register for free accounts with access to over 40,000 resources
Twinkl resources are primarily digital but can be instantly downloaded and printed from the website
In addition to the Twinkl App, various others are also available, including the Twinkl Spelling App, the Twinkl Originals App and the Twinkl Mental Maths App
The website contains an “Inclusion” vertical, with resources for special needs learners, those who struggle with speech and/or motor skills, and those with mental health difficulties