Global Head of Supply and Country Head of TSG, Shiyamal Jayathilake

Leading British online tutoring company, Third Space Learning, is expanding its business operations and reach in Sri Lanka through its fully-owned and BOI-approved Sri Lankan subsidiary, Third Space Global (Pvt) Ltd. At a conference held at Hotel Suisse in Kandy to mark the launch of their scalable work-from-home program to potential teaching candidates, guests were provided with insight into how Third Space Global (TSG) -alongside parent company Third Space Learning- is building the world’s first global and scalable teaching network of highly trained online tutors supported by progressive technology.

Privy to the vacuum of high-quality tutoring services in the online education space, TSG was established in 2015 with the intent to provide personalised online teaching for students in schools across England – with a particular focus on children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

At the launch event, General Manager and Country Head of TSG Shiyamal Jayathilake spoke earnestly about the need for Sri Lankan companies to do more to make job opportunities more accessible across Sri Lanka. As a part of its core mission, TSG intends to expand the reach of its unparalleled tutoring services to students irrespective of wealth and social status, and to create rewarding employment opportunities for more people in Sri Lanka by overcoming resolvable constraints. This has led to a considerable increase in value-added global business support work for its parent company.

Bryan Tookey - Chief Operating Officer, Third Space Learning

The innovative e-learning service promotes student success through a student-centred learning model that supports individualised learning. A stark contrast to traditional lecture-based pedagogy, this easy-to-access tutoring of the digital age offers high-quality curriculum aligned to state school standards, bringing to fruition the company’s commitment to creating positive student outcomes and a growth mindset.

More than five years on, TSG is now 230 employees-strong, having created over 700 jobs through its training programme so far. Since its founding, the company has worked with 33,708 children across thousands of schools, delivering a total of 331,542 teaching hours from its cutting-edge online virtual classrooms.

At the event, Bryan Tookey, COO, at Third Space Learning, pointed out the many reasons Sri Lanka has proven to be a successful and vital operator for the network. “In addition to the high-quality pool of candidates in the country with good spoken English skills, Third Space Global -under the direction of our global manager Shiyamal– has managed to run an operation that is reliable, good at planning and implementation, and more importantly, one that looks after the welfare of its staff.” 

“More generally to other businesses, I would stress that most companies need to make use of the excellent talent pool, and the ability to get things going quickly here in Sri Lanka.” 

Having previously piloted the work-from-home model in Colombo to great success, TSG is confident that Kandy too will be quick to accept this opportunity to grow its workforce. Tutors will now be able to choose what times they are ready to commit to, and with the help of a robust initial training program -followed by an engaging performance management program and access to further training material to aid continuous development-,  will be able to remotely conduct lessons from the comfort of their own homes.

Tom Hooper -Chief Executive Office, Third Space Learning

“I strongly believe in the idea of working from home where possible,” said Shiyamal Jayathilake, General Manager, at TSG. “Not only does it help our staff maintain a good work-life-health balance, it also makes it possible for us to leverage the skills and abilities of Sri Lankans across the country.”

“We intend to seek out and provide job opportunities to every source of talent our country has to offer in this field,” Jayathilake added. “And to consequently make accessible our specialized brand of high-quality education to more students across the UK.”

Already a force in the online education community, now by also leading the way in overcoming the locational and logistical difficulties associated with tutoring, TSG is seeking to expand even further its fully-credentialed tutor network. The expansion enables the company to fulfil its social mission of “seeking social change by cultivating a global community of the most ambitious talent to make effective online teaching more accessible than ever before.” 

The Third Space Global management team with Tom Hooper and Bryan Tookey