How TEEI Counts a Verified Volunteer Hour

TEEI calculates conversation hours from the time a learner and a volunteer are connected to the same video session, rather than the time booked. This guide explains which sessions count, what is excluded and how to check the published figures.

The figures in this guide are a dated reading. They come from TEEI’s published impact snapshot of 18 September 2026, reference pub-2026-09-18T13-04Z-337ca44e, which you can open as it was saved. In that snapshot the counter showed 11,984 sessions and 9,070.4 conversation hours. Every figure below comes from the same snapshot unless we say otherwise. The impact methodology defines each figure, and the session method sets out the counting rules.

1How is a logged hour different from an observed hour?

A logged hour and an observed hour are two different measurements. A logged hour is a claim: someone typed a number into a form after the fact. An observed hour is a record: a system watched two people in the same place at the same time.

Both are useful, and they answer different questions. A schedule shows what was planned: if a session was booked for an hour, the schedule says one hour whether or not it took place. A measurement shows what took place.

If you report volunteer hours from several sources, it helps to know which kind each figure is. Ask whoever supplied it whether the hours were entered by a person or recorded by a system, and what counted as a completed session.

This guide describes what one of TEEI’s conversation hours consists of and how it is recorded. It covers TEEI’s own figures only and makes no claim about how anyone else counts.

2What is a verified volunteer hour, concretely?

In TEEI Language and TEEI Mentorship, a learner books a one-to-one video session with a volunteer. The booking has a start and an end. Both people join a video room that we run.

A verified hour is the time the two of them were in that room together. Not the time the volunteer sat there alone, waiting. Not the booked duration. The overlap of the two people’s connected time, and nothing else.

We call this a conversation hour, and the counter we publish says so: its basis reads “conversation”. It means time when both people were connected.

The word “verified” here means verified by us, from our own room records. It does not mean audited by anyone else. We think it is still more useful to you than a self-reported figure, and we would rather you knew exactly what you are getting.

3How does TEEI count one?

The video room records when each person joins and leaves. After a booking ends, we read those records and work out when each person was connected. Then we find where those two spans overlap.

That shared overlap is the only figure that feeds the hours. If the volunteer connected at 10:00 and the learner at 10:12, the first twelve minutes count for nobody.

We cap the overlap at the booked window plus a grace period, which the session method sets at 30 minutes. Shared time above that cap is excluded, so a session that ran an hour beyond its booking does not get the extra hour.

On TEEI’s current platform, a session enters the count only when three things are all true. The booking is marked completed, the attendance record says the outcome was completed, and the shared time was at least five minutes. A two-minute connection that dropped is not a session.

Then we sum the shared time across all counted sessions and turn it into hours. We floor to one decimal place. A public impact figure never rounds evidence upward, and that is the rule we hold to.

4What is deliberately left out?

Scheduled time. We never add booked duration to the hours. A booking that was accepted and then missed contributes nothing. The counter also reports the booked hours of the sessions verified on our own platform since 10 July 2026. That figure sits beside the measured hours, not inside them.

Sessions awaiting evidence. A booking can be marked completed while its attendance has not yet been confirmed from the room records. We exclude it from the hours and publish it as its own number instead.

In the 18 September snapshot that awaiting-evidence figure was 7. We publish it so the exclusion is visible rather than silent.

Group sessions. TEEI Language also runs small-group conversation clubs, and we report their hours separately. They are never summed into the headline. For a club we count each participant’s observed time in the room, not the scheduled length, so a club that nobody joined shows zero hours.

In the 18 September snapshot the group figures were 33 ended sessions, 99.7 participant hours and 106 attendances. An attendance counts when observed presence reaches at least five minutes, and one person who joins three sessions counts three times.

5Can I check it myself, right now?

Yes, and you need no login. There are two kinds of figure to look at, and it helps to know which one you have open.

A saved publication is a dated reading that does not change. The impact page opens on one by default, named and dated. Its figures stay as they were published, so a report can cite them. The figures in this article come from the saved snapshot of 18 September 2026.

The counter gives today’s figures. Open https://language.theeducationalequalityinstitute.org/api/lc/public-stats, or the same counter on our own site at /api/impact-stats.json. Either returns a small block of JSON, and the ts field is the moment it was measured.

The totals block holds the headline hours and sessions, the awaiting-evidence count, and the booked hours of the verified sessions. The clubs block is the group figure, kept apart.

The counter is updated as sessions are settled, so its figures will differ from the ones in this article. When you compare the two, compare like with like: a saved publication with a saved publication, or today’s counter with today’s counter.

One thing to know about the session total. It combines frozen records from the platform we used before with sessions on the platform we run now. The rules above describe the platform we run now. On the earlier platform, a session is a booking completed there, and its hours are the minutes both people were in video. The session method says of the two: “Both measure the same thing, the time both people were in the room together.”

There is one known exception, listed under known data limitations in the method. It states that “130 completed sessions have an explicit measured time of zero”. Those historical sessions are in the session total. On their hours, the method says: “They contribute no hours and are not backfilled with scheduled duration.” The historical records do not change.

6What does this number not tell me?

Conversation hours document time spent together in sessions. They do not, on their own, show what participants learned or how their circumstances changed. Confidence in an interview, a job offer, a parent reading a school letter unaided: those need their own evidence.

We keep the two apart on purpose. If you need evidence of what changed for participants, ask us for it separately and read it separately. Do not derive it from the hours.

Conversation hours are also one slice of TEEI volunteering. They cover one-to-one video sessions in TEEI Language and TEEI Mentorship, and nothing else. We never add them to any other hours total. Other hours may follow different counting rules or record a different kind of time. Preparation, group activity and self-logged time are examples. If you combine them in a report, say what each part measures, explain what the sum represents, and check that no hour is counted twice.

The counter does not know your company. It counts every session on the platform, whoever the volunteer works for.

Companies volunteer with TEEI at no cost. Read how corporate volunteering works with us, or sign up to volunteer on TEEI Language. If you would rather fund sessions than staff them, you can donate.

Before you put a TEEI hour in a report, ask us what it would consist of for your team. Start on the corporate volunteering page. Bring the questions you would ask an auditor. We will answer them the way this article does, with the counter open.