Khan Academy is a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

The O’Sullivan Foundation was an early backer of the Khan Academy, supporting founder Sal Khan and his team build the platform, explore its classroom implementation potential, and expand the content beyond the initial maths platform. In addition, Foundation is raising awareness of Khan Academy in Ireland – with the goal of making it be the first entire country to adopt Khan Academy as a core part of its mathematics curriculum.

MATHletes Challenge / Learnstorm

In 2014, the Foundation undertook a series of initiatives to increase awareness and adoption of the Khan Academy in Ireland. In partnership with former Junior Minister for Education and current TD Ciaran Cannon and members of the Association of Teaching Education Centres and Department of Education have been running teacher trainings, Saturday Khan Academy clubs for Primary students, maths camps & exam review with Khan Academy for secondary students through the National Education Centre. Additionally, the O’Sullivan Foundation ran the first ever MATHletes Challenge with Khan Academy in spring 2014 – a pioneering maths tournament for Ireland with over 3,000 students from over 250 schools competing. The program grew over three years to reach over 30,000 students participating annually across the country.

Following the successful pilot and scaling work in Ireland, the O’Sullivan Foundation worked with the Khan Academy to build and test the initiative in the US. While MATHletes no longer runs in Ireland, Khan Academy’s adaptation of the MATHletes model in the USA – Learnstorm – is had over a million students participating in 2018.