Over the past few years, Resolute Education has partnered with Oxford University Press, built curriculum into formal school timetables across South Africa, and runs an annual inter-school robotics competition that draws 70+ schools. 

But you don’t need to take that long to build a robotics business today: Resolute’s new robotics “business-in-box” franchise model lets you skip all that groundwork and start an education business today.

The "Business in a Box" package includes Resolute's full robotics teaching business toolkit: curriculum from Grade R to 12, physical robotics kits (Micro: bit-based, progressing to Arduino), access to their online learning platform, and structured training that carries SACE accreditation for educators. Franchise partners would operate after-school clubs or standalone centres rather than competing for space inside formal school timetables.

Applications are open now through their online form, with limited slots and an information session to follow.

The Department of Basic Education gazetted Coding and Robotics as an official curriculum addition in 2024. That created demand across roughly 25,000 public and private schools, most of which don't have the hardware, software or trained teachers to deliver it. 

Resolute has reached 450+ of those schools through its B2B model. The other 24,000+ represent a gap that no single company can fill through direct sales alone.

After-school STEM is a separate market sitting alongside the curriculum gap. Parents in LSM 7 to 10 households are already spending on extramurals and coding and robotics sit in the same category as extra maths, music lessons and sports coaching. The willingness to pay is there. The question is whether the supply side can deliver quality at scale.

And it’s worked well overseas, but you have to move fast. RoboThink, an international STEM franchise operating across 11 countries, is already in South Africa's after-school market. Smaller local operators run coding clubs in various formats. But none of them has Resolute's combination of a formal school track record, an Oxford University Press partnership, and a curriculum already embedded in hundreds of classrooms. That institutional credibility is what a franchise partner would be buying.

The franchise fee and total investment cost haven't been disclosed. That's the single biggest gap for anyone evaluating this seriously. Without knowing the upfront cost, ongoing royalties, and expected revenue per centre, it's impossible to model the business case. Resolute is running information sessions for interested partners, which is presumably where the economics get discussed.

There are operational questions, too. Running an after-school club means finding a venue (school hall, community centre, standalone space), recruiting and training facilitators, marketing to parents, and managing a roster of kids across age groups. Resolute provides the curriculum and training, but the day-to-day execution is on the franchise partner. For someone who is passionate about education but has never run a business, that operational layer is where things get complicated.

The quality control challenge is real. In schools, Resolute works with trained teachers over semesters and years. In a franchise, a first-time operator becomes the face of the brand after a training programme. Whether the training is deep enough to maintain Resolute's standards at arm's length will determine whether the franchise builds or erodes the brand. We saw this same tension in Plato Coffee's franchise expansion, where vertical integration and quality control were central to scaling without diluting the product.

Resolute is positioning this as an opportunity for people passionate about education who want to build something in their community. The realistic operator profile is probably someone with teaching experience or community connections, some capital to invest, and the appetite to run a small business. It's not passive income. It's a hands-on operation that comes with a curriculum and brand you didn't have to build yourself.

For the right person in the right area, a robotics teaching business with institutional backing could be a genuine opportunity. South Africa needs more STEM education capacity than the formal system can deliver. Franchising is one way to decentralise that delivery. Whether Resolute's model is priced right, supported well enough, and scalable enough to work will become clear as the first partners open their doors.

This news was first featured in our 17 March newsletter on 

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