Our Story

We do STEM Education and Tutoring for kids in grades 1-12. AeroBuddies is the go-to STEM education and tutoring company and caters for parents who want to give their children an academic edge and 21st century skills for a better future. Kids experience quality Maths Tutoring and STEM exploration and discover how much fun learning can be at the AeroBuddies tech-based environment.

In 2010, entrepreneur Joe Phalwane recognized that, to truly make it in life students need to be successful at school and for that they need a solid understanding of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) education and in particular mathematics. There was a massive gap, a disconnect between pupils’ learning skills and the maths curriculum they were taught in school. Joe then began a mission to find a solution that could make STEM learning practical and while at flight school training for a pilot license, a sight of a child who must have been 8 years old walking around with his dad doing preflight checks around and inside the airplane planted a seed in his mind that aviation can be used to teach STEM. AeroBuddies was born.

AeroBuddies started as an innovative aviation themed STEM education business which was designed to fundamentally improve maths and science education in the country though teaching embedded knowledge of maths and science through teaching kids to fly on flight simulators similar to how a student pilot learns to fly at a pilot training school thus teaching them practical application of maths and science. AeroBuddies’ solution became a response to the discouraging reports about South Africa’s schoolchildren’s performance in maths and science as per the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD report ranking South Africa’s schoolchildren 75th out of 76 countries in maths and science performance in 2015. In 2016, the business started as a going concern and has never looked backwards, going on to win business awards.

To address that gap in underprivileged communities, an AeroBuddies centre was established in Soweto and Bethlehem in the Freestate —a STEM Education-only learning centre committed to providing the world’s best instruction. Their goal: teach children how to think, with the skills to succeed in maths and STEM in general plus giving them the confidence to achieve their academic potential.