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E.A.R.S. — AI-Powered WhatsApp Teacher Training for Early Hearing-Loss Detection in South African Schools

South Africa · Pretoria · See the South Africa profile · See the Pretoria profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 1% 87/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

University of Pretoria and the hearX Foundation's free AI WhatsApp chatbot trains teachers to spot childhood hearing loss; 12,000+ South African educators enrolled in month one, with 97% passing assessments, building on a peer-reviewed 2022 trial.

10,000+
Educators/parents enrolled (first 2 weeks)
12,000+
Teachers enrolled (first month)
80%+
Completion rate
97%
Pre/post assessment pass rate
1,000+ practitioners, 31 communities
Precursor study sample (2022)
6 months
Knowledge gains sustained
E.A.R.S. — AI-Powered WhatsApp Teacher Training for Early Hearing-Loss Detection in South African Schools

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
University of Pretoria (WHO Collaborating Centre for the Prevention of Deafness and Hearing Loss) / hearX Foundation
Period
2022 (precursor study) – 2026 AI launch, ongoing
Keywords
hearing loss screening, teacher training, WhatsApp chatbot, AI health education, audiology

Context

The University of Pretoria's WHO Collaborating Centre for the Prevention of Deafness and Hearing Loss, with the hearX Foundation, built E.A.R.S., a free AI-powered WhatsApp training programme that teaches preschool-through-secondary teachers to recognise early signs of childhood hearing loss and refer children for care.

Objectives

The programme aims to scale hearing-health knowledge among teachers cheaply and without extra apps or hardware, addressing an estimated 90 million children aged 5-19 worldwide with undiagnosed hearing loss, more than 60% of whom could have it prevented or managed if caught early.

Activities

An AI agent trained on WHO guidelines answers teachers' questions in real time and delivers about 30-40 minutes of content over four days of infographics and two-minute voice notes, via WhatsApp and the Turn.io messaging platform. It builds on a peer-reviewed 2022 intervention study of an earlier, non-AI WhatsApp training programme for over 1,000 early childhood development practitioners across 31 communities in the Western Cape.

Results

The 2022 precursor study found significantly improved hearing-health knowledge, with gains sustained six months later. Following its March 2026 launch, the AI version enrolled over 10,000 educators and parents within two weeks and more than 12,000 South African teachers within its first month, with an 80%+ completion rate. Among teachers completing both pre- and post-training assessments, 97% passed and over half scored perfectly, with the largest gains among those who started with the lowest baseline knowledge.

Conclusions

Published figures to date cover teacher knowledge gains and enrolment; a peer-reviewed measurement of downstream student learning outcomes from the 2026 AI rollout specifically has not yet been published.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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