EdTech: BayelsaPRIME, a bold move at democratising quality basic education
When teachers arrive at state-owned primary schools in Yenagoa, Sagbama, Ogbia, or Kolokuma/ Opokuma local government areas in Bayelsa state they do not sign in with pen and paper.
They bring out their blue government-issued teacher-tablets, punch a few buttons and in a matter of seconds their exact arrival time is electronically transmitted to a server which can be monitored by basic education sector policymakers in the state capital, Yenagoa. Their lesson guides for the day are also sent to the teacher-tablets (prior to any school day). As each teacher progresses through the day, it is known remotely, which teachers are actually in class teaching and which teachers are not. Interestingly, teachers who leave school before closing time can also be identified. This was not possible a few months ago. BayelsaPRIME (Bayelsa Promoting Reform to Improve and Modernise Education) a basic education reform policy which has changed the way teachers and education sector policymakers do their jobs introduced the changes as the government launched the programme to engender more efficient, productive schools.
BayelsaPRIME is an EdTech programme that is using technology to improve access to basic education across Bayelsa state. Before the state launched the programme, there were at least sixteen distinct challenges ailing the school system. Teacher absenteeism, irrelevant curriculum, inadequate equipment and materials for teaching and learning and poor administrative skills teachers weighed heavily on the system. The evidence was poor learning outcomes among children and widespread loss of confidence in state-owned schools. But this is not an exclusive Bayelsa problem.
Beyond state borders
Across states in Nigeria, circa 10.5 million children are not in school according to UNICEF. Despite the free primary education at the disposal of Nigerians, the full benefits do not trickle down. In Bayelsa, unconfirmed figures put the number of out-of-school children at over 200,000. And this is just an aspect of the problem nationally. Four in 10 children in stateowed primary schools cannot read while eight out 10 are unable to read for comprehension, in a country where children make up a significant portion of the population.
BayelsaPRIME is a rational response to these challenges at the state level. Through the programme, the Bayelsa state government is addressing the issue of out-of-school children, while also ensuring that learning outcomes drastically improve sustainably in the state in the shortest time possible.
What makes BayelsaPRIME different?
Imagine a scenario where previously poorly motivated teachers are retrained, reoriented and equipped with technology to deliver on their mandates as teachers. Imagine a scenario where children in remote, riverine villages have the same quality of lessons as those in the state capital. Imagine a scenario where all children get the same quality of education irrespective of their backgrounds or the socioeconomic status of their parents. Imagine a scenario where teachers cannot falsify their school arrival or departure times and the government knows the set of teachers who are doing their jobs and those that are not. These are possible through the technology that BayelsaPRIME provides.
In January and February 2023, the first set of over 2,000 teachers and 222 headteachers from the primary school system were retrained for 10 days in readiness for the implementation of BayelsaPRIME in their schools. The period was utilised to train, orient, and equip the teachers with the necessary technical tools, classroom management skills, and pedagogy required to dramatically improve learning outcomes in their schools. They received 2,439 teacher tablets while their headteachers were equipped with smartphones, power banks, and chargers to facilitate their role in improving learning outcomes in schools. Since their return to the classroom, this equipment has helped them carry out their new assignments daily.
Apart from the initial training, ongoing coaching, mentoring, and support is in place for all 222 schools in the programme across the four pilot local government areas to ensure that teachers are effectively implementing the strategies and techniques learnt during the induction training. They are additionally provided with continuous refresher training to improve the implementation process.
But the most exciting part is with the children. tFor the first time school is fun. “We were shocked to see that children were at the forefront of getting other children back in school when we resumed,” a teacher at Community Primary School II, Trofani, Sagbama local government area, Amanda Akpogumere said a month after BayelsaPRIME came alive in her school.
The programme introduced a whole new culture in the classroom. Making learning fun for children. They sing when they are bored and need motivation. And teachers are no longer frightening to the children, the BayelsaPRIME pedagogy ensures that children are free to speak up during the teaching and learning process and there is direct feedback and reward for excellence.
For teachers, the programme has meant more support from the state government because the teacher tablets have obliterated the drudgery of preparing long lesson notes and supplier-proven lesson notes which can be studied beforehand in preparation for classes.
For the headteachers, there has been an ease in the way schools are managed. All pupil-related records are electronically stored in Apps provided by the reform programme, while data has become the backbone of performance review and evaluation. On a visit to schools in late March 2023, the Executive Secretary of Bayelsa State Universal Basic Education Board (Bayelsa SUBEB), Chief Victor Okubonanabo noted that “I am seeing changes in the system.”
“For the fact that we haven’t gone too far if I can see these changes, it means we will get to a better level in the near future. With BayelsaPRIME, basic education will drastically improve across Bayelsa State,” he continued. Stakeholders within the system attest to the impact technology is playing as government addresses the sixteen weaknesses of the basic education system in Bayelsa state.
BayelsaPRIME, a technology based basic education reform programme, is aimed at delivering dramacic improvements in learning outcomes in public schools across Bayelsa state, writes Oluchi Chibuzor
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It all begins with the training of the teachers. During their 10-day induction training, teachers are taught to develop a whole new mindset of possibilities. They are accultured to look on the bright side and consider all pupils as potential champions who should be assisted and encouraged to attain their full potential.”
As the sun rose on Monday 30, January 2023 in Trofani town Bayelsa state, primary school pupils, teachers and headteachers also rose in anticipation of a new term and beginning. Teachers were particularly excited yet apprehensive about the prospect of the new start.
Two weeks before resumption day, over 2,000 teachers and headteachers drawn from four local government areas had been in Yenagoa for a special reason. They were at the BayelsaPRIME Induction Training which kickstarted Governor Douye Diri’s
basic education reform programme.Coined out of the words Bayelsa Promoting Reform to Improve & Modernise Education, BayelsaPRIME is designed to cause a major transformation in the way classes are conducted and how pupils across the pilot 222 primary schools receive learning.
The induction training provided anopportunity to upskill teachers and steer their energies in the direction of a whole new methodology which has been proven to deliver exceptional results, especially in low income and minority communities.“We came into school knowing that we had been equipped to do things differently and better. But we just didn’t know what the result or the response of the children was going to be on day-one,” said Amanda Akpogumere, who is a teacher at Community Primary School II, Trofani, Sagbama local government area.“By the third day we started seeing things we had never seen before,” she said, her eyes widening in excitement. “The children were the ones inviting their fellow pupils to come to school because the environment was suddenly more inviting, exciting, accommodation and child-friendly.”
WHAT MAKES BAYELSA PRIME DIFFERENT?
BayelsaPRIME is a technology based basic education reform programme aimed at delivering dramatic improvements in learning outcomes in public schools across Bayelsa state. The programme is transforming government primary schools into powerful public schools using innovative technology and data-driven platforms, quality learning materials, effective teacher professional development and ongoing coaching, and technology-enabled support teams who deliver 360-degree support to all stakeholders in the school ecosystem on a daily basis. Regardless of a child’s location, income or education levels of the child’s parents, all children in state-owned schools now have a chance to thrive and succeed academically. Under BayelsaPRIME
all children are properly profiled into a database that enables policy makers track their academic progress with a view of helping them succeed. Under the programme, learning outcomes are critical and strategies aimed at improving them are at the core of school activities.
It all begins with the training of the teachers. During their 10-day induction training, teachers are taught to develop a whole new mindset of possibilities. They are accultured to look on the bright side and consider all pupils as potential champions who should be assisted and encouraged to attain their full potential. Key themes at the training include pupil motivation, modern classroom management techniques, child protection, the place of technology in deliver of impactful lessons, amongst other important topics. During the training, each teacher is assigned a teacher-tablets which facilitates teaching and learning back in school. Lesson guides are sent to the teachers through the tablets to ensure that a structured approach to teaching is attained across all schools and classrooms simultaneously. Through the tablets, teachers who are not teaching and those who are not punctual in school can be identified for counselling and reorientation.
The tablets also serve as a source of information and news from the Bayelsa State Universal Basic Education Board (Bayelsa SUBEB) and the State Ministry of Education. It is the tool through which school attendance is electronically recorded for teachers and pupils. “On the first day of resumption teachers were enthusiastic to mark arrival using the teacher tablet. Unlike in the past when teachers could come late and still sign 7.30am in the school register, most teachers were in school at the right time to sync with the headteacher’s smartphone,” said Amanda.
The headteacher smartphone of which Amanda spoke is the smartphone assigned to each headteacher. Applications in it ensure that schools and teachers are optimally managed. It is the only device required to access the internet periodically for BayelsaPRIME to function.
THE GAP EVERYONE KNOWS
BayelsaPRIME was launched by Governor Diri to address specific gaps in the basic education system which are not peculiar to Bayelsa state. Nigeria is experiencing learning poverty as an estimated 70 percent of 10-year-olds cannot read, understand a simple sentence or perform basic numeracy task, according to the United Nations International
Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF). The challenge has been attributed to factors including, poor funding of schools, low quality and skill level of teachers, availability of teachers in schools and other factors outside the school system. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) says the current number of out-of-school children in Nigeria stands at 20 million. Globally the figure is 244 million with India, Nigeria and Pakistan contributing the highest figures globally. At a seminar in 2022, UNICEF Communication Specialist, Geoffrey Njoku, noted that there is no way the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be achieved by 2030 without focusing on children’s rights and education.
BayelsaPRIME is designed to place Bayelsa state on the path of attaining SDG 4 which specifically addresses education and lifelong learning. Governor Diri is ensuring that the right amount of time and resources are being deployed to attain the programme’s objectives. In complete compliance to the governor’s intentions, the Ministry of Education and State Universal Basic Education Board are working hand-in-hand to see to the success of BayelsaPRIME. While speaking at the last Bayelsa Education Summit, the Honourable commissioner for Education, Dr.Gentle Emelah noted that “the educational sector which lies in the plans, policies for pedagogical engagement and strategies of government would require proper evaluation and overhauling to meet with the needs of society as we gradually approach the first half of the 21st Century.”
BayelsaPRIME is a strategic programme aimed at meeting that need through better learning outcomes. Speaking on her initial assessment of the programme in her school Amanda notes that, “if we are able to maintain this tempo with which we started, the children will benefit. We are using songs, cheers, energizers to make the classrooms more interesting for them. From what we can see they are learning better.”
Friday, February 3, 2023
Tech-based teaching will reform schools, says Bayelsa
The Bayelsa State Government has said the newly introduced BayelsaPRIME will revolutionarise teaching and learning in Bayelsa state-owned primary schools. A statement signed by the Bayelsa Ministry of Education stated that the BayelsaPRIME (Bayelsa Promoting Reform to Improve and Modernise Education), was the flagship of the basic education reform programme of the Senator Douye Diri-led administration.
It read, “The programme which is executed by the Bayelsa State Ministry of Education and the Bayelsa State Universal Basic Education Board will use technology-based teaching methods and proven modern classroom management techniques as tools to improve pupil participation in classroom, learning outcomes and school attendance.”
It added that over 2,000 teachers and headteachers drawn from four Local Government areas had concluded the BayelsaPRIME Induction training.
Speaking at the graduation ceremony, Commissioner for Education Bayelsa State, Dr Gentle Emelah, “Teachers in the four pilot Local Governments Areas will no longer face the drudgery of preparing lesson notes as proven and effective lessons will be delivered to them through their teacher-tablets weekly.
“They will also receive continuous support and teacher professional development throughout the school calendar.
“Additionally, all data collection processes including marking of teacher and pupil arrival in schools and recording of examination scores will be carried out through the teacher tablets.
The data will be housed in a server that will support empirical policymaking going forward. “His Excellency, Senator Douye Diri conceptualised this policy in response to challenges facing our educational system.” “ One thing is sure, our children are going to start learning better with this policy in place,” he added.
Also speaking at the graduation ceremony, a teacher from Government Model School Kiama, Ms Tsubaleifa Kiekaiesa, thanked Diri for going the extra mile to upskill Bayelsa State teachers.
Tuesday, 24 January 2023
Liberia: “Invest In People, Prioritize Education,” A Learning Necessity
January 24 is the UN’s International Day of Education. The theme for 2023 is “Invest in people, prioritise education.” UNESCO, the UN’s education arm, makes a compelling case for such investment: “Without inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong opportunities for all, countries will not succeed in achieving gender equality and breaking the cycle of poverty that is leaving millions of children, youth and adults behind.”
Governments are already investing vast sums of money in education. Although the average for sub-Saharan Africa is lower at 3.4% – below the global average of 4.3% – international donors also contribute very large sums. The Global Partnership for Education invests funds raised from donor countries such as the US and UK. In total, GPE has spent more than $5.7 billion of donor funding on education across sub-Saharan Africa.
But despite such levels of government and international spending, education outcomes are at crisis levels. The World Bank’s most recent update estimates that 89% of ten-year-olds in the
region cannot read a simple sentence. The Covid pandemic and associated school closures are not to blame. “Learning poverty was very high even before the pandemic,” says the Bank. Nor is a lack of enrollment. 90% of primary age children attend school in low and middle income countries.
These grim statistics make clear that prioritizing education is not enough. What must be prioritized is learning. Increasingly, visionary leaders across Africa are changing the way they spend money on education, by investing in outcomes – clear learning gains for their students and opening the sectors for more partnerships in education.
In Liberia, the Government has leveraged its flagship education Program; LEAP to improve learning gains for students in government schools as a means of addressing the country’s learning crisis. LEAP, is the Liberia Education Advancement Program, an innovative education partnership that came into existence in 2016, currently supporting nearly 500 public schools across Liberia’s fifteen counties.
The multi-partnership educational model designed by the Liberian Government delivers 100% tuitionfree primary education throughout Liberia from early childhood education through Grade 9. Government’s largest technical partner in the LEAP Program; Bridge Liberia, ensures every teacher receives comprehensive instructional guidance for every lesson, based upon cutting edge pedagogical research with a technological approach.
The technology enables world-class quality lessons, specifically designed to maximize learning, to be delivered by all teachers. It also provides real-time monitoring from every classroom in every school supported by Bridge Liberia. Government education officers can track not only students’ performance, but a whole range of other crucial indicators that support learning gains.
This also helps to reduce absenteeism, truancies, and even teachers not coming, by remotely monitoring them and seeing who is teaching what and the quality of teaching across primary schools. The results of all these interventions are excellent.
The teaching methods underpinning the Liberian Government’s technical education partner; Bridge Liberia and all other programs supported by NewGlobe have been independently studied in Kenya by a team led by Professor Michael Kremer, Nobel Prize winner for Economics in 2019. It reported that students taught using the methods made some of the biggest learning gains ever found in such a study.
On International Day of Education, we should be clear that investment which drives-up learning and transforms outcomes for students must be our priority. We also need to understand that if it can be achieved, the gains across Africa and the whole world will be transformational too.
Monday, 7 November 2022
Bridge Liberia supported students deliver academic excellence at 2021/2022 Liberia Primary School Certificate Exam- 94% passing rate
In 2016, when the Liberian Government through the Ministry of Education announced Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL), now known as the Liberia Education Advancement Program (LEAP), an innovative public private partnership, the goal was to strategically transform the primary public education system and improve learning gains for the students covered under the program. Now in its 7th year, the program has four education providers supporting the Government education agenda in all of Liberia’s 15 counties.
To measure the impact of the program, multiple independent studies have been conducted since the
inception of the LEAP Program. Bridge Liberia, the Government’s largest partner in the LEAP Program, supporting over 300 Government public primary schools has participated in all these independent studies. The results of these independent studies prove statistically significant learning gains for the students in the program and the efficacy of the Government’s approach, thus validating the impact of the LEAP Program and Bridge Liberia intervention in Liberia’s education sector.
One of the studies showed that Bridge Liberia students gained 2.5 years of additional learning after 3 years with Bridge Liberia, and another showed that
81% of Bridge Liberia students are proficient or basic readers, versus only 33% of students in traditional public schools.
These independent studies are backed by the performance of students sitting the Liberia Primary School Certificate Examination (LPSCE), a model of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) Exam for third and sixth graders in Liberia. The pilot for the exam launched in 2021 and has been administered to third and sixth graders every year in four subjects; Language Arts, Mathematics, General Science, and Social Studies.
The 2021/2022 edition of the examination saw students from Bridge Liberia supported schools performing excellently with 94% passing rate of the total students that sat the examination. A total of 2,256 students from Bridge Liberia supported schools sat the exam during the 2021/2022 sitting, with a whooping 2127 students passing. Female students constitute 950 while male students make up 1,177 of the total number.
These results are clear evidence that Bridge Liberia is delivering far beyond the set government’s
goals and radically shifting education in Liberia by leveraging technology and innovation to tremendously accelerate student learning outcomes in the government schools it supports.
With the growing evidence about the unprecedented scale of the learning crisis and an increasingly public acknowledgment by leaders that the 2030 SDG4 goal – the provision of quality education for all by 2030 – will not be met. Such learning gains for students especially in low income communities and government schools can’t be understated; this is celebratory news for Liberia.
Such results are in contrast to the recently published World Bank Report on Education with the Bank drawing down on the achievement of its goal of reducing learning poverty. Indeed, learning poverty can be reduced with educational providers like Bridge Liberia and its umbrella organization NewGlobe supporting governments with programs designed to achieve learning outcomes amidst the most challenging circumstances for public school students.
Tuesday, 11 October 2022
LIBERIA: Giving girls their time, rights and future, begins with educating them
World leaders at the UN Transforming Education Summit last month received a very clear message on equality.
Without it, education cannot be transformed. “We all use the word transformative a lot – not only at this historic Summit. But in this case, the evidence is undeniable. Gender equality is transformative,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told the Summit. “When girls and women have an equal opportunity to learn – and when education supports gender equality for all – communities and societies prosper.”
There is a long way to go. According to UNESCO, 129 million girls around the world are out of school, including 32 million of primary school age. Just under half of the countries have achieved gender parity in primary education.
This year’s UN International Day of the Girl Child has the theme “Our time is now—our rights, our future.” Urgency is essential. The covid pandemic and long school closures increased global levels of learning
poverty. Only about 35% of children worldwide can read a simple sentence at the age of 10. In subSaharan Africa, that figure is just 10%.
Even when schools reopened, girls were less likely to return to education than boys. As many as 11 million didn’t go back to school. Yet it is clear – as Catherine Russell affirmed – that educating girls benefits not just them, but their societies and entire nations. One additional year in school can lead to a 25% increase in wages in later life for girls.
The cost of girls failing to complete education is between US$15 trillion and US$30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings for countries, estimates the World Bank.
Sadly it is already clear that the Strategic Development Goal of providing quality education to all by 2030 – SDG4 – will be missed. The Bank’s latest report predicts SDG1 – the goal of ending extreme poverty – is also unlikely to be achieved, unless there is an urgent refocus on key investments, including education.
“Over the next decade, investing in better health and education will be crucial for developing economies. Governments will need to concentrate their resources on building human capital and maximizing growth,” says Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s Chief Economist.
The consequences of underinvestment in education and the related halt in reductions of global poverty will be particularly tough for women and girls, already more likely to be poor. At least 244 million women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa live in extreme poverty.
But visionary governments in the Global South are increasingly finding a way to invest in transforming their state education systems, at speed and at scale, in partnership with NewGlobe. And doing so is raising the attainment – and life chances – of girls.
There is no argument that girls’ education is important. In Liberia, a girl is more likely to be married by 18 years old than to know how to read. NewGlobe’s support for the Liberian government’s LEAP program – as Bridge Liberia we are the biggest partners – includes ensuring girls have the same opportunities to learn and thrive as boys. Unlike in many public school systems, pregnant girls are allowed and encouraged to stay in Bridge Liberia schools and young first-time mothers are actively encouraged to return to classrooms by school and community leaders.
As a result of the Ministry of Education program in Bridge Liberiasupported schools, 5th-grade girls’ average performance on reading fluency increased by more than 27 words per minute. Once lagging by 10 words per minute, girls now outperform boys. The learning methods underpinning all NewGlobe’s programs, which is Bridge Liberia technical partner, have been independently studied in Kenya by an academic team led by Professor Michael Kremer, the Nobel Prize-winning economist.
Their results found learning gains “among the largest in the international education literature,” with primary students taught using the NewGlobe methods nearly a year of learning ahead of their counterparts in other schools after just two years. Crucially, the learning gains were equally large for girls and boys.
The findings contrast with established research which shows girls in Sub- Saharan Africa are consistently disadvantaged in learning, with lower literacy rates than boys even when both have the same educational attainment.
Bridge Liberia support for transformative education programs uses an approach that has gender parity built into its design.
Gender-sensitive school management includes ensuring that girls are given school leadership roles and equal learning opportunities as boys. Teachers are trained to call on both boys and girls in the classroom. As fewer girls than boys usually volunteer, teachers are trained to practice more cold calling to ensure equal participation.
As signatories to the Women’s Empowerment Principles, we are committed to gender equality in the workplace as well. Female teachers and school leaders provide role models within the classroom and community.
Girls take up at least as many positions of responsibility in schools as boys. The state and national governments transforming their public education programs with the support of NewGlobe know that success depends on transforming learning outcomes for girls as well as boys.
If the global aims of the Transforming Education Summit are to be achieved, more leaders must do the same. Only then will girls have their time, their rights, and their future.
Friday, 25 February 2022
EdoBEST: Portrait of Progress, Impact across Generations
When you meet 9-year-old Chioma Okoh for the first time, you will assume she is of few words, soft-spoken and shy. But as you speak with her, your perception will change. You will notice that her spoken English is excellent for her age and that she reads fluently. Your face may even crack into a smile when she begins to joyously sing those songs introduced into the Edo State school system through EdoBEST. But Chioma was not always this way. Her transition from a child who could barely read, to one who can read and interact properly, is an interesting story which began in Delta State.
Unexpected change
In 2020, Chioma’s father, Benjamin Okoh passed away. It was a sad experience for the little girl and to continue her education, she moved in with her aunty, Betty Ngozi in Edo State. “My brother’s daughter is my daughter,” Ms. Ngozi says. “I therefore had to take her in and give her the best education I could afford when my brother passed away.” When Chioma arrived Benin City, she was placed in a private school close to Ms. Ngozi’s home in the hope that proximity to the school would afford her more
study time and good grades. After several months at the private school, “it was clear that there was a problem. Chioma could neither read, nor write properly,” Ms. Ngozi says. “Though I was paying heavily, there was no correlation between how well she was performing academically and how much I was paying. To make it worse, her school report card showed that she was performing above average,” says Ms. Ngozi who is in her late 40s and has seen two of her own children through university.
This period coincided with the then, ‘Teaching at the Right Level’ (TARL), an initiative implemented across Edo State public primary schools under the EdoBEST programme. Under the initiative, schoolchildren across Edo State were tested to better understand their competence in English and Mathematics. They were then placed in classes that reflect their capability for intensive teaching to get them up to speed.
Chioma was enrolled at Ivbiyeneva Primary School, an EdoBEST primary school in Benin City then. Pupils in primary 6 who were performing at the level of pupils in primary 4 were brought into primary 4. “The whole process put some pressure on the pupils also, some of those in higher classes were ashamed of receiving classes with their juniors. But in the end, after a term we saw marked improvement in grades and reading abilities,” she said. “The first thing I noticed about Chioma was that on her own she would pick up the EdoBEST books and start reading aloud without much supervision,” says Ngozi. “Another thing I noticed was that the house was full of singing, the child had become a happier child. After those intensive months in the public primary school, she was able to read like never before, her numeracy skills also improved tremendously. I said to myself, this thing we are doing is working,” she added.
Across Edo State, tales of marked improvement in learning outcomes of pupils in the public-school system were rife and a preliminary evaluation of the outcome of the programme showed that it is working. In February 2019, the Edo State government commissioned a report called ‘The EdoBEST Effect’ which was designed to look at learning gains in the first term of the EdoBEST programme. The study looked at 30 control schools, 30 intervention schools and considered primary 3 and Primary 4 students. It was discovered that pupils learnt in one term what they would normally learn in one year. An EdoBEST school equates to nearly three-quarters of a year more mathematics instruction and nearly two-thirds of a year more literacy instruction compared to a traditional Edo State primary school. Primary 3 EdoBEST pupils scored six percentage points higher in mathematics and seven percentage points higher in English Literacy. More broadly, EdoBEST students scored higher on every examination. In Mathematics, they scored two percentage points higher than ‘status quo’ students. For English Literacy, they were five percentage points higher than ‘status quo’ students. Interestingly, increase in results were driven almost entirely by girls who outperformed boys but both boys and girls in outperformed pupils in ‘Status Quo’ schools. Research also showed that EdoBEST teachers were 54% more likely to praise their pupils, thereby encouraging them to deliver better results.
The impact of EdoBEST transcends learning outcomes among pupils. It has affected teachers, young and old, in the primary school system. Teachers who were hitherto averse to technology and anything gadgets began to appreciate how easy teaching and learning became after Governor Godwin Obaseki introduced the EdoBEST programme into schools, with its attendant proprietary techniques and technology. “With the advent of EdoBEST, I was handed a teachercomputer by the state government. I was taught how to mark attendance, score kids in their tests, mark my arrival and departure in school and also receive and review lesson guides,” a primary school teacher outside Benin City said. “I had to learn how to use the technology. Today I have moved further. Now, I have a smartphone with which I can do so many things, the technology no longer scares me because it’s part of my work tools, I use computers everyday like any other professional,” he said.
Many primary school teachers in Edo State who were not technologically savvy have been trained to use technology as a work tool. Some have even
gone the extra mile to research on ways to do their jobs better, using the internet.
In 2022, the Edo State government continues to expand the EdoBEST programme across hardto-reach primary schools and junior secondary schools in Edo State. In the closing days of February 2022, a total of 379 schools cutting across primary and secondary schools had been added to the programme. Over 600 primary school teachers undertook the EdoBEST induction training in January, while over 1,800 secondary school teachers were trained in February. All these personnel were equipped with teacher tablets or smartphone. Upon return to their schools, these gadgets will be used for better school management, teacher and overall implementation of the EdoBEST pedagogy. The gadgets will also be used as tools for information dissemination from the Edo State Universal Basic Education Board to teachers and principals in the schools “His Excellency Governor Godwin Obaseki is committed to spreading the gains of EdoBEST to every corner of our state. This is the motivation behind this training. We are doing this to ensure that all our schools have adequate number of upskilled teachers and every child is learning,” Mrs. Ozavize Salami, Executive Chairman of EdoSUBEB said.
In 2018, Obaseki launched EdoBEST, a holistic basic education reform programme to address learning gaps and deficiencies identified in the school system. Since inception, the programme has been hailed as a workable, effective and sustainable template for basic education service delivery reform. Other states in Nigeria, including Lagos, have launched similar reform programmes mirroring EdoBEST. The overall objective is to see more pupils like Chioma benefit from the programme which has not only enhanced her learning outcomes but also helped her become more socially adaptable.
“It was an intense period for all of us. The thinking was that if we were able to get the children to read and write properly and perform basic arithmetic, then they will do well in other subjects.”
Thursday, 26 January 2023
Most children in poor countries are being failed by their schools
Having teachers follow pre-baked lessons could help
“Good job you!” shouts Pauline Bika, as a group of schoolchildren completes the hokey-cokey. “Good job me!” choruses her class. Ms Bika runs a small government primary school in Edo state, in southern Nigeria. It is reached by a mud track that starts not far outside Benin City, the state capital. Her school has 140 pupils, but only three teachers. She seems both pleased and a little embarrassed to offer a visitor a plastic chair.
For all that it lacks, Ms Bika’s school has one advantage. At the start of last year the state education ministry gave each of her teachers a small tablet with a black-and-white touch screen. Every two weeks they use it to download detailed scripts that guide each lesson they deliver. These scripts tell the teachers what to say, what to write on the blackboard, and even when to walk around the classroom. Ms Bika says this new way of working is saving teachers time that they used to spend scribbling their own lesson plans—and her pupils are reading better, too.
That is sorely needed, for much of the education given in much of the world is strikingly bad. Across
the developing world many schoolchildren learn very little, even when they spend years in class. Less than half of kids in low- and middle-income countries are able to read a short passage by the time they finish primary school, according to the World Bank. Across sub-Saharan Africa, as few as 10% can (see chart). Experiments like those under way in Nigeria mark one attempt to improve things. They also face fierce opposition from critics who are convinced they mark a wrong turn.
The reforms in Edo began in 2018. Godwin Obaseki, the state governor, says that poor schools are one reason youngsters have often left the state for greener pastures (some fall victim to peopletraffickers promising better lives in Europe). Since then, the government has provided tablets and training to more than 15,000 teachers. They in turn have given the new lessons to more than 300,000 children, most of them in primary schools. On any given day pupils throughout the state receive identical lessons, as dictated by the tablet.
The training and technology are provided by NewGlobe, an education company founded in 2007
by three Americans (Pitchbook, a data firm, valued the company at $250m following a funding round in 2016). NewGlobe developed its approach while running a chain of low-cost private schools, mostly in Kenya, under the brand “Bridge International Academies”. A study by academics including Michael Kremer, a development economist at the University of Chicago, found that, over two years, children who attended NewGlobe’s primary schools made gains equivalent to almost a whole year of extra schooling, compared with their peers in other schools.
Though Edo was the first state in Nigeria to strike a deal with the firm, NewGlobe’s approach has since also been applied in Lagos, the country’s biggest city. The firm is starting work in Manipur, a state in north-eastern India, and in Rwanda. Around a million children are now studying in classrooms that use NewGlobe’s model—far more than its private schools have ever been able to reach.
Although it seems able to find plenty of clients, the company provokes ferocious arguments among educators. Its private schools have long faced energetic opposition from trade unions and some international ngos, many of whom hate the idea of profit-seeking companies playing any role in education. Others resent the application of mass production to what they see as a skilled, artisanal profession.
Dennis Sinyolo of Education International, a global group of teachers’ unions, says scripted lessons “undermine teaching” and encourage “rote learning
and exam drilling”. He says good lesson plans are written to match local contexts, and the needs of individual students. “The freedom to change tack midlesson is invaluable if a lesson plan is not working. “There’s no one-size-fitsall in teaching,” he says.
Visits to schools in Edo provide some perspective on what is going on. There are doubtless many ways to teach a scripted lesson badly. But the idea in Nigeria is that they will tend to make classes more compelling. The scripts enforce instructional practices that are routine in many rich-country classrooms but often neglected in poor ones. These include techniques such as pausing frequently to pose questions to the class, instead of delivering long lectures at the blackboard, or encouraging pupils to try to solve a problem by chatting to the child sitting next to them.
Detailed, prescriptive lesson plans are also supposed to relieve teachers of the burden of having to write their own. That, advocates hope, will leave them more energy for other jobs—such as making sure their charges stay engaged. Teachers in Edo have been trained to lead their classes in short games and songs whenever they think pupils have grown restless (hence the hokey-cokey). Ms Bika says things are better than in the past. Before, bored children would occasionally wander home during the day. Inattention was sometimes punished with the cane.
The changes do more than alter teaching styles. A study published in 2010 estimated that on any given day around a fifth of Nigeria’s primary school teachers were absent from their classrooms. Earlier research suggested as little as one-third of class time is used productively. In Edo, tablets register when teachers arrive. They can tell if a teacher has scrolled through a lesson faster than appropriate, or if they have abandoned one halfway through. Beneath lies a low-tech foundation: a team of officials—about one for every ten schools—that observe lessons and coach teachers, helped by data from the tablets.
The depth of its scripting and the whizziness of its tablets set the work in Edo apart from many other attempts to improve schooling. But the programme has things in common with a broader family of reforms burdened with the clunky name of “structured pedagogy,” most of which are less controversial. This argues that isolated splurges on goodies such as textbooks often fail to bring
benefits. Making big improvements seems to require pulling several levers at once. So the idea is both to give more materials to pupils and better lesson plans to teachers, alongside fresh training and frequent coaching.
In 2020 a panel convened by the World Bank and other bodies concluded that these are some of the best things education reformers can spend money on. In the past few years the approach has been applied in Gambia, Ghana, Nepal and Senegal. One programme in Kenyan government schools helped push up the number of children reaching the national standard in English by 30 percentage points.
But it is not only in poor countries where tightly structured approaches to schooling are gaining a following. In America, for example, there is growing awareness that schools have been clinging to modish but ineffective “child-led” ways of teaching reading that other developed countries such as Britain have junked. Literacy programmes that were dismissed as old-fashioned are coming back into favour.
McGraw Hill, an American publishing company, sells a series of highly scripted courses aimed at primaryschool children. Bryan Wickman of the National Institute for Direct Instruction, a charity in Oregon, says that using the simplest, clearest language possible is crucial when teaching the smallest children. He says the idea that lessons based on scripts must inevitably bore children should surprise anyone who enjoys other things that are performed from scripts, such as plays.
Success For All, a programme used in some British and American schools, puts much faith in “cooperative learning”—which involves encouraging children to solve problems together in small groups. But much else that goes on in its classrooms is structured and scripted. Such prescriptiveness helps teachers adopt techniques that research suggests work well, says Nancy Madden of Johns Hopkins University, one of Success for All’s creators. These include giving pupils quick and frequent feedback and keeping up a rapid pace to keep children interested.
Ms Madden says teachers who have grown familiar with her programme’s techniques are not expected to keep following scripts to the letter. But when, in the past, her team relied mostly on training workshops to spread their approach, they found that
only a fraction of teachers kept up the new practices once they were back in their classrooms.
She admits that teachers sometimes bristle at the constraints that scripts impose: “It is not what they teach you in teacher school.” Sceptics often come round, she says, when they see kids making swift progress. Mr Wickman points out that other expensively trained professionals, such as pilots and surgeons, also have procedures that they must follow to the letter. After some initial complaints (similar to those expressed by dubious teachers) such regimented approaches have become widespread in those fields. They help reduce mistakes, and spread better ways of doing things. Back in Edo, Mr Obaseki’s transformation still has plenty to prove. An analysis published in 2019 by the state government and NewGlobe claims that during the first year of the reforms children learned as much in a single term as they were previously learning in one year. But the project has yet to undergo a rigorous independent evaluation. Much of the existing evidence that supports scripted schooling relates to basic literacy and numeracy among the youngest children. In Edo, lesson scripts are being used to teach almost every subject, and are being applied to teenagers in junior secondary schools.
Whether strict scripting is necessary remains a topic of debate. (The World Bank panel, for instance, argued that word-for-word scripts are less effective than simpler guides.) In 2018 rti, an American nonprofit group, analysed 19 school-reform efforts it had been involved in across 13 countries, including Ethiopia and Uganda. It concluded that programmes with slightly less prescriptive guides—a page of notes per day, say, rather than a full-on script— produced better results. Advocates of a more relaxed approach say another advantage is that leaving teachers with a bit of freedom to tinker can help win their support. Yet Edo’s approach appears to have persuaded most local teachers of its worth.
Mr Obaseki, the state governor, says school staff had long felt ignored and unappreciated; he says that providing more training and equipment has brought fresh motivation. He insists that support for the project among unions was crucial to his reelection, in 2020. It has, he says, been “one of my best investments”.
Yearning for Learning: 7 Lessons from Western and Central Africa
Thursday, 19 January 2023
Washington, January 20, 2023 - Success for young girls in West and Central Africa like in the story of Ama starts in primary school where good teachers and good conditions can help them focus on learning. Providing training and resources for teachers, having regular learning assessments, but also good roads to facilitate school transport, clean water and toilets at school, and school feeding programs are proven interventions to help improve learning outcomes.
As the World celebrates International Education Day, investing in young people and making education a priority matter more than ever. Here are seven key lessons from Western and Central African countries from the regional education strategy to help girls and boys get ready to learn, acquire real knowledge, and enter the job market with the right skills to become productive and fulfilled citizens:
1 - Recognize previous gains
Average net primary school enrollment in Western and Central Africa is close to universal, rising from 50% in the 1990s to nearly 90% today. Secondary
enrollment in the last decade more than doubled to a current average of 55%. While the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the education crisis in the region and millions of children could not go to school or access distance learning, significant efforts have been made in educating young African girls and boys over the last decades. But there is more to do to further advance education reforms.
“With close to universal access in the primary cycle, the progress made is dazzling. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that this success is relative, as it is more quantitative than qualitative. There still is a long way to go,” says World Bank Regional Vice-President for Western and Central Africa Ousmane Diagana.
“With close to universal access in the primary cycle, the progress made is dazzling. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that this success is relative, as it is more quantitative than qualitative. There still is a long way to go,” says World Bank Regional Vice-President for Western and Central Africa Ousmane Diagana.
Despite progress, 8 out of 10 children in Western and Central Africa are unable to read and understand a simple text by the age of 10, and more than 32 million children remain out of school - the largest share of all regions worldwide. Weak foundations in childhood continue into adulthood: heavy school drop-out, limited social advancement, and a low-qualified workforce are the consequences of learning poverty. Transforming education means the government taking action to end learning poverty.
3 - Leadership for impact: Countries learn from their own experiences
Tackling the learning crisis requires strong leadership, better implementation, and more investments in high-impact interventions, including a whole-of-society and government approach. Governments can learn from such interventions, expand, and adapt them to local
contexts. In Chad, a mobile payment system for the remuneration of community teachers improved their attendance record, while enhancing their commitment. In Mauritania, the establishment of school management committees increased parent involvement. Mali increased secondary school enrollment 2.5 times since 2000 thanks to a dynamic public-private partnership model. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sierra Leone offered free lessons through radio, television, phones, and online. In Senegal, the Improving Quality and Equity of Basic Education project has helped Koranic schools, or daaras, provide foundational skills to pupils. In addition, the Africa Higher Education Centers of Excellence project is training postgraduate students and scaling up research capacity and regional collaboration in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, to address the widespread skills shortages. These examples show that countries can take action and turn this learning crisis into an opportunity for building a better future.
4 – For the Sahel region, education offers a path to peace, and equitable and inclusive growth.
Education is a key driver of stability, social cohesion, and peace. In the face of growing uncertainty, young people live in areas where climate shocks prevent them from farming as they did before, and many turn to the call of the terrorists. Empowering the youth with the right skills and giving them job
opportunities is essential to realize their full potential and ensure social justice for all. The Sahel countries and partners, such as the Sahel Alliance, are taking important steps to roll out an education roadmap as a game-changer over the next 10 years. In the 2021 Nouakchott declaration, the G5 leaders committed to developing innovative policies to improve quality education by boosting support to teachers and increasing education expenditure beyond the 3 percent of GDP currently allocated to this area.
5 – Harness the power of technology
Technology can play a crucial role in providing new and innovative forms of support to teachers, students, and the broader learning process while also enhancing the equity, quality, resiliency, and efficiency of education systems. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, millions of students were affected by school closures. In Nigeria, Edo state saw an opportunity to further the development of its digital education drive and used WhatsApp, among other platforms, to organize e-classes. Through its EdoBEST initiative, more than 11,000 teachers received rigorous training and 7,000 virtual classrooms were created, in a whole system reform to leverage modern digital technologies backed by science to improve teaching and learning processes.
6 - Putting young people first
“Putting our young people first is at the heart of our work. Even before the pandemic, the world was already experiencing a learning crisis. The future of any society lies in its ability to provide its children and youth with the tools and opportunities to flourish, and to contribute to the development of the country,” said Ousmane Diagana. The #YouthActOnEDU Spoken Word Competition mobilized youths on the Education matter and showcased the importance of education and access to quality learning. Meet, watch, and listen to the winners from across the AFW region.
7 - A strong political commitment
Leaders from across Western and Central Africa endorsed the Accra Urgent Call for Action on Education in June 2022 to meet ambitious targets with a focus on:
• helping 30 million children to read by 2030;
• ensuring that 12.5 million more adolescent girls are in school by 2030;
• training 3.7 million more young adults in foundational skills by 2025;
• ensuring that 1 million more youth acquire digital skills by 2025, of whom 60% are expected to obtain better jobs.
Saturday, 18 March 2023
Sanwo-Olu transforming education in Lagos through EKOEXCEL
On 1 January 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development – adopted by world leaders in September 2015 at a historic UN Summit – came into force. One of the goals – the No 4 –is “to ensure inclusive and equitable quality of education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. This signposts the importance of education to the development of any society as it is evident in the gulf between developed and underdeveloped societies.
When Mr Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu campaigned for the exalted office in 2018, he unveiled a strategic development agenda that he promised to pursue when elected as the governor of the state. The agenda comprises six pillars which are Traffic Management and Transportation; Health and Environment; Education and Technology; Making Lagos a 21st-century Economy; Entertainment and Tourism; and Security and Governance. It was not a coincidence that Education is one of the pillars of Sanwo-Olu’s administration having been in government for enough time to know how crucial the sector is to reflect the centre of excellence slogan of the state. As soon as he was elected in 2019, he began to walk the talk by prioritising Education and Technology in project execution. A deliberate incremental budgetary allocation for education from eight per cent in 2020 to the current 12 per cent underscores the governor’s sincerity to reform the sector from the base, which is primary education. Setting the agenda for the wind of change is one of the projects that has become a point of reference,
the Excellence in Child Education and Learning (EKOEXCEL). The innovative and transformational programme, which is managed by the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (LASUBEB), provides quality education in the public system and upskills teachers by leveraging technology. This underpins a study by Novel Prize winningeconomist, Prof. Michael Kremer which states that attending schools and delivering highly standardised education has the potential to produce dramatic learning gains. This suggests that policymakers may wish to explore the incorporation of standardisation, including standardised lessons plan and teachers’ feedback monitoring, in their own systems. Kremer’s study also suggests that if the methodology is replicated across public education systems, the learning gains will be enough to put African children from underserved communities on track to match their peers in countries with incomes three or four times higher.
So, setting the building blocks, the EKOEXCEL initiative began with a Pre-service Professional Development and Technology Training Programme for teachers and headteachers in the state’s primary schools. A pilot scheme of 4,000 teachers from 300 primary schools across the state saw the training incorporate the use of technology devices and other tools for modern teaching in order to support teachers in achieving better learning outcomes in the classroom. The programme, which commenced in 2020, has seen 18,000 teachers move from analogue to digital teaching using tablets and an updated curriculum, which has impacted over 450,000 pupils in public primary schools in the state. As the curriculum is being updated to meet the demand of the present day, so also is the complementary infrastructural upgrade through massive construction and renovation of existing educational infrastructure with the completion of more than 1,097 school projects, upgrade and rehabilitation of 322 dilapidated public schools and furnishing of primary schools with 87,000 dual composite units of chairs and desks.
Testimonials abound on how impactful the EKOEXCEL initiative has being in the career of
primary school teachers as Aletile Afolake, a teacher with the Ministry of Education District 6, lauded the digital training she had gone through at the expense of the state, Afolake, who had believed teaching is limited to standing before the pupils with a writing board to explain lessons, experienced teaching in its contemporary form. In her words “I’m highly excited to be part of the training, and I want to appreciate the governor for taking such a bold initiative to better position education in Lagos. We were exposed to computer programmes and systems of teaching and learning via technology that is basically structured to create animations games and cartoons,” she said.
Despite the outbreak of Covid-19 impacting education in Lagos, the EKOEXCEL programme and the governor’s vision enabled children to continue learning unlike many of their peers across Nigeria. As schools were closed during the pandemic, EKOEXCEL launched blended learning with the adaption of the EKOEXCEL@Home initiative to ensure that learning continued even in remote and poorly internet-connected communities. The programme consisted of self-study activity packets, learning guides, interactive audio sessions, virtual classroom experiences and WhatsApp quizzes. As an initiative that leverages technology, 450,000 mp3s with prerecorded lessons were distributed, making it the largest learning technology rollout on the continent for remote learning.
It is noteworthy that the EKOEXCEL 2020-2021 Endline Fluency and Numeracy Evaluation has further justified the investment and affirmed the strategic intervention’s impact. The evaluation showed that EKOEXCEL pupils are making substantial progress in oral reading fluency and foundational numeracy compared to their performance before the initiative came into force. Obviously, when the 2021-2022 evaluation will be released, it will capture the impressive performances of the pupils from Lagos State in the National Common Entrance Examination (NCEE). In the 2022 academic year, 71,738 pupils were registered with 34,030 being male. Lagos State registered the highest number of candidates with 19,518 out of which 18,787 sat for the examinations. While the overall best student in the NCEE scored 201 out of 210, three pupils of Lagos public primary schools were just three, four and five points behind the best student as Ayomide Daniel Ajayi of Hussey Military Yaba scored 198, Damilola Basit Araba of the same school had 197 and Deborah Ugbaha of St Georges Girls scored 196. Deborah, who came third among Lagos pupils who sat for the NCEE, finished first in the in-school examinations, including the end-ofterm one and two examinations. Ayomide and Damilola
were second and third respectively, signposting the efficacy of EKOEXCEL’s methodology in boosting gender parity and improving overall academic performance.
However, the trio were not the only successful Lagos pupils. Others also had good scores, showing the significant movement of EKOEXCEL pupils towards proficiency. Of 53 pupils tracked and ascertained to have registered for the NCEE, 32 had excellent grades. More deductions from the tracking revealed that 32 pupils from 22 schools surpassed the aspirational and proficiency targets by 11.6 per cent and 9.6 per cent respectively, while the threshold targets for Partially and Below Proficiency were exceeded by 8 per cent and 9.3 per cent margins respectively.
Sustaining this performance and more by the pupils, there is also the Instructional Leadership App, a software which allows school leaders to monitor and respond to issues, including the percentage of lessons completed. With this app, primary school administrators can assess teachers’ performance and benchmark that against that of other schools’ performance.
Lest I forget, the latest addition to the curriculum is the “Hour of Code”, a onehour introduction to computer science for Primary 1 to 6 pupils using fun tutorials. This programme is designed to demystify coding at an early age and enhance learning outcomes in public primary schools in the state. It is not surprising to see stakeholders commend the impact of the EKOEXCEL initiative in transforming primary education in the state. They were unanimous in their appraisal during the 2022 Lagos State Education Summit. Members of the Lagos State Chapter of the National Association of Education Secretaries of Nigeria (NAESN) and Association of Primary School Heads of Nigeria (AOPSHON) have even gone beyond appraisal to endorse the Governor for a second term as a result of the upward trajectory of basic education in the State.
The premise for their endorsement is the over 3,000 teachers employed and equipped with tablets which have made teaching easy for the teachers while their welfare packages have improved just as new schools are built and old ones renovated.
EKOEXCEL is a game changer as there remain endless opportunities on the horizon. A renewed four-year mandate holds a lot for the Sanwo-Olu administration to engrain a competitive formative education in Lagos.
Wednessday, 7 December 2022
Sanwo-Olu, Setting The Benchmark For Education In Nigeria: The EKOEXCEL Case-Study
When he formally launched his bid for a second term on Saturday, December 3, Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu touched on his achievements in education. He said, “Lagosians can testify to our feats in education. Over 1,000 new classrooms have been added to public schools, and we completed over 1,097 projects in schools. “We trained our teachers in modern teaching techniques through EKOEXCEL and handed over tablets to them for teaching. Overall performance of Lagos students in WAEC has improved from 42 per cent to over 83 per cent.
Though he was right, the Governor somewhat undersold his achievements. Apart from being a key pillar of his THEMES development plan for Nigeria’s first megacity, Sanwo-Olu has demonstrated uncommon commitment to the overall educational development in the state. Looking at the state’s annual budget since his coming into office, education has taken a significant portion after health and infrastructure.
In 2022, he allocated the lion’s share of N171.6 billion to education and next year, it will take the third largest share of the budget. While 20.06 per cent (N339 billion) of the 2023 budget is for infrastructure and, 11.29 per cent (N191 billion) for healthcare and the environment, 9.07 per cent (N153.5 billion) is for education.
Apart from the budgetary allocations, the Governor is also taking concrete policy steps to improve learning by empowering and motivating teachers to give their best while creating a conducive learning environment for pupils. Undergirding all this is the deployment
of technology to improve basic education further and bring Lagos’ to par with what obtains in other countries with EKOEXCEL, a strategic technologydriven intervention that continues to record remarkable successes. Part of EKOEXCEL’s success has been improving learning gains among pupils. Commendably, empirical studies have affirmed this.
The EKOEXCEL 2020-2021 End line Fluency and Numeracy Evaluation showed that EKOEXCEL pupils are making remarkable progress in oral reading fluency and foundational numeracy compared to their last performance. Year 6 pupils were also outstanding in the previous National Common Entrance Examination. Another study by awardwinning Nobel laureate, Professor Michael Kremer, also acknowledged the impacts of EKOEXCEL’s methodology as being implemented by its technical partner, New Globe, which operates the same in Kenya. Kremer and his co-authors, including Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Anthony Keats, Isaac Mbiti and Owen Ozier, critically examined the benefits to student outcomes of a structured and standardised approach to teaching and learning in Kenya. Its findings showed that primary students through Grade 6 gained almost an additional year of learning (0.89) under the NewGlobe integrated methodology, learning in two years what their peers learn in nearly three. For early childhood school students, the gains are even more significant. Those students supported by NewGlobe gained almost an additional year and a half of learning, learning in two years what students in other schools learn in three and a half years. Kremer noted that “this study shows that attending schools delivering highly standardised education has the
potential to produce dramatic learning gains at scale, suggesting that policymakers may wish to explore the incorporation of standardisation, including standardised lesson plans and teacher feedback and monitoring, in their systems. Apart from the transformational innovation, the Lagos State government has also prioritised teachers’ welfare by upskilling them and improving their welfare. At this year’s Lagos State Annual Teachers’ Merits awards, Governor Sanwo-Olu presented 13 teachers and administrators with brand-new SUVs and other prizes, rewarding them for excellence and diligence in teaching. Among the 13 were four public primary school teachers under the EKOEXCEL programme. On that occasion, the governor reiterated his administration’s commitment to using education as a weapon to develop Lagos and influence the teaching profession.
“Through EKOEXCEL, thousands of teachers have been up-skilled through re-training and the use of technology that supports and motivates them to succeed in their classrooms. “This accentuates the importance of education to this administration and our continuous effort to strengthen the workforce’s capacity through employment opportunities for qualified teachers with a passion for teaching. “We have also instilled local and international training for our teachers, creating an enabling environment for teaching and learning,” he said. At the 2022 World Teachers’ Day celebration, Sanwo-Olu announced the approval of a pay raise for teachers. That was in addition to implementing new welfare packages for the teachers, further underscoring the governor’s commitment to their wellbeing.
But the most important is the pupils. The current administration has not held anything back from ensuring that the ones in school have an enjoyable time and remain there while the out-of-school ones join them. The state has significantly reduced its burden through its flagship Project Zero explicitly dedicated to out-of-school children. LASUBEB’s enrollment drives, supported by EKOEXCEL’s support team are also helping to tackle the outof-school menace. Because it’s now a knowledge economy and the future belongs to those with adequate knowledge, the introduction of technology including learning tablets has stirred pupils’ interest in science, as three pupils who represented the state in the 2022 National Jets Competition were admitted.
John Daniel from St. Francis Primary School, Maryland, who came second in the quiz competition, said, “My favourite thing about the EKOEXCEL programme is the striving pupils and the great work sections of the character board, which keeps every
learner on their toes both morally and academically. It has allowed me to keep adding to my evergrowing vocabulary with new words learned from the vocabulary section of most subjects. “Two girls who presented an air and temperature monitoring system they developed using an embedded approach, Unique Emmanuel and Sarah Adeyemi of Monsuru Agoro Primary School, Mafoluku, also hailed the intervention. Emmanuel said, “EKOEXCEL has impacted more knowledge in my life. I have learned so many things through the programme, and I so much love the strive points. “Learning through the EKOEXCEL programme has made me know faster and think faster. It has also made me organised and punctual in school. It allows for interaction whenever our teacher asks us to discuss it during a lesson.” Adeyemi, on her part, commended the variety of textbooks they get under the scheme. “This helps me to read widely and acquire more knowledge. It also helped me to excel in my last JETS competition and brought victory to the state and the school. “EKOEXCEL motivates us to learn in class through songs and teaching. Instructively, the technology successfully deployed in primary schools is now being adopted in secondary schools with the recent unveiling of a newly-built containerised technology-driven modular classroom block in Vetland Junior Grammar School, Agege. At the unveiling, Governor Sanwo-Olu said the nine-classroom block was built to replace decrepit concrete structures in Vetland Junior Grammar School, a government-owned model college. The interactive modular classrooms were improvised using standardised reusable freight compartments, known as containers. Each classroom compartment is adequately insulated to give comfort and create a conducive ambience for hybrid learning for children in public secondary schools. The governor said the IT-enabled modular interactive classrooms would make a lasting impact on the state’s effort to make basic education accessible.
Aside from equipping the classrooms with interactive touch screens, Mr Sanwo-Olu said the pupils would be given electronic tablets to aid both in-class and virtual learning. “The development of containerised modular classrooms is a welcome milestone on our journey toward ensuring that no child is left behind in Lagos. Our goal, as a government, is to build learning spaces of the future, thereby bequeathing public schools that are driven by cutting-edge technology and that can compete favourably with the best schools anywhere in the world,” he said. With the priority he has given education, there’s no gainsaying that Mr. SanwoOlu would do more in his second term so that Lagos becomes the best nationally.
…Thorpe, a child development and education consultant, writes from Lagos.
The Potential of Africa’s Youth is Enormous. We
Must Ensure They Learn.
Sunday, 19 February 2023
2023 is a demographic tipping point for Africa’s youth. According to the World Bank, for the first time in recorded history, we will have the largest population of young people on the planet.
As Governor of Nigeria’s most populous state, home to Africa’s largest city, I carry the responsibility for maximizing the potential of our human capital, especially that of our young people.
That potential is great. We are a youthful country, with more than 40% below the age of 15. Already the largest in Africa, a young and growing population offers us the chance to build on Lagos State’s role as the economic hub of Nigeria, and Nigeria’s as the economic hub for the entire continent.
But historically, educational outcomes in Nigeria have been very poor. The World Bank estimates that currently some 70% of ten-year-olds across the
country are in so-called “learning poverty” – meaning they are unable to read even a simple sentence with comprehension.
Ensuring that Lagos can harness its growing population to drive prosperity, growth and security not only within the state but within the country requires an education system that delivers learning.
I have made education a priority. Our “Leave No Child Behind Policy” has been the driver behind an enrollment policy designed to make sure all children in Lagos State go to school. We are succeeding –the vast majority do now attend – but investing in enrollment is not enough.
It is vital to ensure that children are not just attending school. They must learn to their best abilities. That requires a commitment to focus remorselessly on driving up learning outcomes.
Here in Lagos State we have made exactly such a commitment. In 2019, with support from our technical partners NewGlobe, we launched EKOEXCEL, a program designed to transform the learning outcomes of all pupils across all our public primary schools.
We began with our teachers. The quality of our education cannot exceed the quality of our educators, and we recognize that the best possible support for our teachers is vital. More than 14,000 teachers have been trained and upskilled in proven teaching techniques. Each one is supported to teach world class-quality lessons, with the same curriculum and same lesson notes based upon cutting-edge pedagogy delivered through their own personal teacher tablet.
That also provides real-time monitoring from every classroom in every school. EKOEXCEL leaders are able to track not only student performance, but a whole range of other crucial indicators, including teacher attendance, student attendance and lesson completion.
Access to such comprehensive learning data may be commonplace in the Global North, but in Africa it is revolutionary. UNESCO estimates that there is no learning data at all for two-thirds of African children.
With strong support from teachers, school leaders and teaching unions, we have expanded EKOEXCEL to cover every public primary school in Lagos State – more than 1,000 schools, reaching more than 350,000 students.
Results have been excellent. Endline tests found that after two years, despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, an average Primary 3 EKOEXCEL student could read at nearly the same fluency level as an average Primary 5 pupil from before the launch of the program.
The learning gains we have seen in EKOEXCEL echo the findings from a study of the methodology which underpins our program, one led by the Nobel Prize winning economist Professor Michael Kremer. That study found learning gains ‘among the largest ever measured in international education’ when it tracked learning outcomes in schools in Kenya.
Early monitoring also found the program was delivering gender equity gains, with girls registered at EKOEXCEL schools 8% more likely to attend than girls at other schools. The entire program is geared towards gender equity. All artwork and creative stories in textbooks and work-books are commissioned to ensure equal visibility of male and female characters, and specifically represent female characters in powerful, unconventional roles. Teachers are trained to call on both boys and girls in the classroom. As fewer girls than boys usually tend to volunteer in class, teachers are trained to practise more cold calling to ensure equal participation.
We are proud of our achievements, and proud that in 2022 EKOEXCEL was awarded the Titans of Tech Award for Best Innovative Digital Learning Platform, thanks to its evidence-based impact.
The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was frank when he spoke to fellow delegates at the Transforming Education Summit in September. He told them that education systems were not making the grade and failing students and societies. Transformation was required. Countries were asked to sign up to a global Commitment to Learning; which Nigeria did. It is one of the few countries globally delivering on that commitment
KwaraLEARN: Investing In People, Prioritising Education Our Goals – AbdulRazaq
Wednessday, 25 January 2023
Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq of Kwara State has reiterated the dedication of his administration to delivering education that is both high-quality and relevant to the 21st century. Speaking at the Phase 2 of KwaraLEARN Teachers’ Induction Training Graduation Ceremony in Ilorin, the State capital, the governor emphasised that, “Our huge investment in the education sector continues despite dwindling revenues and competing priorities for governments worldwide. We are investing heavily in education and human capital development because we prioritise the sector and the future of the state.”
According to AbdulRazaq, “Kwara State emphasis on enhancing the quality of education and the wellbeing of both teachers and pupils would be highly praised by UNESCO, the United Nations’s education agency, which frequently advocates for investing in education. By focusing on the development of both pupils and teachers, describing the latter as the bedrock of the State and the former as the future of the State, Kwara State aligns with the theme of this year’s International Day of Education, “Investing in People, Prioritising Education”. January 24th was designated as the International Day of Education by the UN in 2018 to recognize the significance of education for growth and peace.
“The International Day of Education is a reminder that despite the progress being made in terms of global growth, there are still societies that do not prioritise education. This day serves as a call to action, emphasising the importance of inclusive and equitable quality education for all in order to achieve gender equality and break the cycle of poverty. “My government’s focus on human capital development through strategic interventions, such as the KwaraLEARN programme, has been a comforting solution to the problem of children and youths being out of school. The government’s efforts have been praised globally. As part of this effort, thousands of government teachers and school leaders have been retrained in digital and scientific teaching methods and are now providing this education to public primary schools in ten Local Government Areas in the state.”
AbdulRazaq further explained the significant investment made in primary education as a way to improve the learning outcomes of pupils. He believed that providing a solid foundation in primary education is crucial for children’s development.
“KwaraLEARN, which is supported by NewGlobe as its technical partner, ensures that every teacher receives instructional guidance that is based on the latest pedagogical research.
This technology allows for world-class lessons to be delivered by all teachers and also enables real-time monitoring from every classroom in every school, which is designed to maximise learning. “This technology allows us to decrease absenteeism, truancy, and absenteeism among teachers. By using remote monitoring, we can monitor who is teaching what and the quality of teaching across primary schools,” he added.
He stated that KwaraLEARN has trained primary school head-teachers and teachers in the use of digital technology, such as tablets and updated curricula. The programme has been implemented in 870 public primary schools in the State and has improved the interaction between teachers and pupils through the use of eLearning.
“In addition to incorporating technology, Kwara places a strong emphasis on the wellbeing of its teachers. During the closing ceremony of the Phase 2 Teachers’ Induction Training, His Excellency reemphasised his administrations’ commitment to the wellbeing of teachers.
“I assured teachers of improved welfare packages beyond paying their salaries. We appreciated the best teachers recently. We are working on a housing scheme, which will come in place very soon by the grace of God. We will also come up with a scheme under which teachers will have access to car loans.
“As this year’s International World Education Day highlights, I understand the value of investing in the education sector. He recognises the transformative power of quality education and is working to provide pupils with a more promising future through the KwaraLEARN programme, which not only improves their education but also provides their teachers with the skills necessary for a successful 21st-century education system,” he stated.
The chairman of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), Kwara State Wing, Comrade Oyewo Bashiru Ayinde, has praised the support provided to his members.
“KwaraLEARN has transformed the way teaching and learning is approached, making it more focused on the needs of the pupils. The technology also allows the teachers to continuously learn and improve as they have access to guidance and support. Overall, it has been a positive experience,” he said. When teachers are provided with proper resources and training, the pupils are the primary recipients of the benefits. A study conducted by 2019 Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Michael Kremer in Kenya discovered that the methodologies used in KwaraLEARN led to significantly improved learning outcomes in numeracy and literacy compared to traditional teaching methods, with pupils learning twice as much in numeracy and three times as much in literacy. This study is considered one of the most rigorously conducted interventions in Africa and Emerging Markets. At various forums, parents have praised Governor AbdulRazaq’s KwaraLEARN programme, noting improvements in their children.
One of the parents during the First Week of School Visits, Mrs. Munirat Jimoh, stated, “I am pleased with the progress my kids are making through KwaraLEARN. I did not anticipate them performing so well in the exams, my son in Primary 5 came second, while the one is Primary 3 came first.”
At the Bishop Smith LGEA School B, Hajia Madinat Sanni, a parent, also recognised the academic advancements of her wards.
“My child is performing so well. I regularly check in with his teacher and I’m pleased with his progress,” she added.
No more invisibility for girls: Closing the gender gap through
Education
Monday, 13 March 2023
On International Women’s Day every year, we honour the accomplishments and impact of remarkable females throughout the world in line with the theme ‘DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality’. However, there are still countless girls who remain unseen and unheard. The UN SDG 5 is focused on achieving gender equality and giving all women and girls the same opportunities by 2030. Unfortunately, we are not even close to reaching many of these objectives; education being one of them.
Education is an essential area in which solutions must be implemented to achieve equity. One of the most significant hindrances to achieving gender equity is the absence of global data on girls and women – making it challenging to develop solutions. According to a UN Women article, only 48% of the information necessary for tracking SDG 5 is accessible. The article conveys this idea emphatically: “Where data is absent, women and girls are invisible.”
In Sub-Saharan Africa, the lack of data on learning outcomes and education is huge. Data is missing
for both girls and boys, but girls are impacted more as learning inequities are more common. A 2022 UNESCO GEM report reveals that there is no data at all on the learning levels of two-thirds of African children.
However capturing data is a core part of the KwaraLEARN model. By supporting government partners to track data, girls who were previously invisible are seen – meaning when support is given excellent learning outcomes are assured.
A recent study shows the benefits of KwaraLEARN’s model. By tracking student progress across indicators like attendance and academic performance, data can be used to develop methods and techniques that directly promote learning outcomes for girls. To see increases in learning outcomes for girls in Africa, it is essential that governments and education stakeholders are supported in education programs and systems that embrace the potential of capturing learning data.
UNESCO has noted that the difference in school attendance between girls and boys is shrinking,
although in certain areas like Sub-Saharan Africa girls are still less likely to attend and remain in education. With Improved learning, and learning outcomes, girls will more likely attend school, and stay on.
Having access to education, and the support to attend school is often the first learning barrier many girls face.UNESCO has noted that the difference in school attendance between girls and boys is shrinking, although in certain areas like Sub-Saharan Africa girls are still less likely to attend and remain in education. With Improved learning, and learning outcomes, girls will more likely attend school, and stay on.
In KwaraLEARN, which NewGlobe is the technical partner, there is a higher level of involvement from girls – 8% more likely than those attending government schools outside the programme. Numerous examinations of education in Africa have revealed models where girls do not get adequate encouragement to learn.
The Nobel Prize Laureate Professor Michael Kremer found the opposite when he led a study of NewGlobesupported schools in Kenya. His 2022 report revealed that learning gains were equally large for girls and boys in NewGlobe support schools. The findings contrast with established research which shows girls in Sub-Saharan Africa are consistently disadvantaged in learning with lower literacy rates than boys even when both have the same educational attainment.
For girls to engage and succeed in school, they must feel represented and have positive role models. This can be challenging in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a 2019 NewGlobe study highlighting: “arguably,
the most common barrier for girls [in Sub-Saharan Africa] has been the lacking societal sense of entitlement to education.”
KwaraLEARN model aims to break down these barriers. By ensuring girls are represented and encouraged to learn, an environment is built that engages them. A few examples of this include:
• Commissioning all artwork and creative stories in textbooks and workbooks to ensure equal visibility of male and female characters, ensuring female characters are in powerful and unconventional roles.
• Introducing school leadership roles for both girls and boys.
• Approximately 60% of KwaraLEARN teachers are women, providing role models within the classroom and community.
• Fostering partnerships, such as coding programs, aiming to close the gender gap of girls and women in STEM.
This International Women’s Day must focus on foundations; the foundations of learning, the foundations of gender equity, and the solutions needed to ensure they are part of the future for all women and girls. It’s time to make sure all girls are visible.
As the world celebrates the significant achievements and contributions of girls and women around the globe, engaging in discussion about gender equity. KwaraLEARN emphasizes the importance of having a strong focus on the foundation of equity and empowerment – education and the ability to learn.
Monday, 13 March 2023
How we’re transforming education through KwaraLEARN — AbdulRazaq
Kwara State governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, has reiterated the commitment of his administration to the development of education in the state through one of the state’s initiatives tagged ‘KwaraLEARN. The programme is one of the solutions aimed at reducing the number of outof-school children and retraining teachers and school administrators in digital and scientific teaching methods as they have now been providing this education to public primary schools pupils in 10 local government areas of the state.
At the recently held phase 2 of the KwaraLEARN teachers’ induction training graduation ceremony held in llorin, the state capital, the governor said his investments in the education sector would continue despite the dwindling revenues and competing priorities. He noted that “providing a solid foundation in primary education is crucial for children’s development. “We are investing heavily in education and human capital development because we prioritise the sector and the future of the state.”
In addition to incorporating technology into the learning processes in schools in Kwara State, the governor stated that his government would continue
to place a premium on the well-being of teachers. He assured the teachers of improved welfare packages beyond the payment of their salaries. “Aside from all these, we are working on a housing scheme, which will come into place very soon. We are also coming up with a scheme under which teachers will have access to car loans.”
The state chairman of the National Union of Teachers, Mr Oyewo Bashiru Ayinde, lauded the governor for the support being provided to his members through the programme. “The KwaraLEARN initiative has greatly transformed the way teaching and learning are being approached in the state now, focusing more on the needs of the pupils. “The new technology now allows teachers to continuously learn and improve their teaching skills. In all, it has been a wonderful experience,” he said.
Other stakeholders at the event also noted that when teachers are provided with proper resources and training, the learners have a lot to benefit. They also agreed that KwaraLEARN compared to the traditional teaching methods would significantly improve learning outcomes in numeracy and literacy among the pupils.
The parents also praised the KwaraLEARN programme, noting the improvements in their children. One of the parents, Mrs Munirat Jimoh, said “I am pleased with the progress my kids are making through KwaraLEARN. I did not anticipate them performing so well in their examinations. My son in Primary 5 came second, while the one in Primary 3 came first.” At Bishop Smith LGEA School B, another parent, MadinatSanni, also recognised the academic advancement of her wards. “My child is performing well. I regularly check in with his teacher, and I am pleased with his progress,” she said.
NewGlobe methods transforming African and Indian education as world leaders gather to address learning crisis at global summit.
Wednessday, September 14, 2022
An innovative teaching methodology delivering “learning gains among the largest ever measured” is being taken-up by more and more African and Indian governments – ahead of the global education summit to tackle what’s being called the greatest learning crisis for 100 years. Rwanda’s Government is the latest to launch a national education transformation program – RwandaEQUIP – with the aim of making the country’s entire basic education system globally competitive.
Global leaders are gathering in New York for the UN Transforming Education Summit – convened in response to the crisis in global education. A ‘Solutions Day’ will focus on the few replicable programs – like RwandaEQUIP – already delivering transformation at scale.
“Educational transformation is a core priority for the Government of Rwanda and bold investments have been made to this effect.”
said Gaspard Twagirayezu, Minister of State in Charge of Primary and Secondary Education.
RwandaEQUIP is supported by NewGlobe’s innovative methodology, confirmed in a landmark study to deliver learning gains easily in the top 1% of those ever rigorously studied at scale in emerging markets. The study, led by Professor Michael Kremer, 2019 Nobel Prize winner, suggests children living in underserved communities receive over 53% more learning in NewGlobe supported schools compared to
students in other schools.
The results are an affirmation of NewGlobe’s integrated learning system, used by the Government of Rwanda and others across Africa and India to support a million students today and growing year-on-year. The study is based on a randomized control trial of more than 10,000 students from low socioeconomic backgrounds in Kenya. After two years, primary students taught using NewGlobe’s methods are nearly a whole additional year of learning ahead of students in other schools. For pre-primary students, two years’ teaching using NewGlobe’s methods puts them a year-and-a-half of additional learning ahead of other students.
NewGlobe’s Africa Director Clement Uwajenza said: “Despite enormous global investment, the 2030 SDG4 education targets will be missed, failing another generation of children. Now, is the time to identify and scale effective local solutions already being implemented by governments in the Global South. We all know the scale of the crisis, now we need practical action to solve it. The international community must unite and commit to implementing solutions already proven to work if we’re to have any prospect of delivering on the promise of quality education for all. We must all hope that this Summit seizes the chance for change.”
The groundbreaking education study also finds children taught using New Globe’s methods are three times more likely to be able to read at age seven. The World Bank estimates 90% of 10 year olds in Africa can’t read a single sentence. World Bank Education Director Jaime Saavedra says the level of learning poverty in low and middle income countries is “the most serious education crisis of the last 100 years.”
The latest UNESCO estimates suggest that SDG4 – the target to ensure quality education for all by 2030 – will be missed, with 300 million children still not reaching basic standards in literacy and numeracy.
Wednessday, 29 March 2023
Edtech Monday Proposes Best Formula For Early Reading And Numeracy
In the classroom, edutainment takes the form of media, games, toys, and experiences that mix fun and learning to motivate pupils, especially in early reading and numeracy. This tech model of teaching has been suggested at EdTech Monday program which emphasizes use of technology to improve Rwandan education and learning in schools. Aired at KT Radio, the program is conducted every last Monday of the month under the sponsorship of Mastercard Foundation Centre for Innovative Teaching and Learning in ICT in collaboration with the Rwanda ICT Chamber.
The March episode was conducted under the theme “Improving Foundational Literacy and Numeracy through Hybrid models of learning.” “Every lesson should be researched thoroughly. It has been proven that teaching pupils in the form of entertainment is more productive. Children learn codes, and numbers in form of games,” Jean Marie Vianney Karegeya, founder of School nest said. “Teachers should be trained to use these IT materials; some don’t need the internet. There are games installed that can be used to teach children, but it needs simple skills and research by teachers who should be trained regularly to this effect.”
Karegeya pointed out that to make the learning environment more enjoyable for students, teachers also use gaming in addition to edutainment. In the end, these teaching strategies improve learning outcomes and pupil retention. The efforts follow
high rates of pupils who cannot read or do simple numeracy at the age of 10 years, in Africa. By the age of 10, nearly nine out of ten children in Sub-Saharan Africa are unable to read and comprehend a basic text, according to the State of Global Education Update for 2023, from the World Bank. More so, 70% of people worldwide are unable to complete this job, up from 57% prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In Rwanda, enrollment figures are good, above 96%, but there should be quality education and the way to go is technology in teaching. Technology improves three main things; school management, model of teaching and skills on lesson delivery,” Clement Uwajeneza, Managing Director of RwandaEQUIP said. “We do the research and provide teachers with digital teaching materials. It has been researched and it works. It makes teaching easy for a teacher, but a child learns easily in the form of games and entertainment,” Uwajeneza added.
According to Uwajeneza, RwandaEQUIP works with 250 public and government aided schools and gives digital teaching materials (tablets) to over 7000 teachers across the country. In Rwanda, the literacy rate is increasing gradually in addition to the need for additional initiatives to promote reading culture in Africa. Only 58% of adults over the age of 15 were educated in 1991. In 2018, the percentage rose to 73%. “It all starts with the youth; they should be able to invent these technologies and put them on market. This is what we do, they bring their ideas and tech mentors help to formulate them into IT solutions. We have all the categories starting from 5 years old to university students,” Consolatrice Byiringiro, Future Coders Program Coordinator at kLab Rwanda said.
“They have different lessons, specifically children with five years old are taught gamification. This teaches them codes but in the form of games. This is an opportunity for them, some come before learning how to read so they learn reading in the form of entertainment.”
Teachers welcome new Tech-enabled methodology in public primary schools
Tuesday, 13 September 2022
Primary school leaders and teachers, who are undergoing the induction training on technologyenabled teaching and pedagogical techniques for enhanced classroom engagement, testified that the skills gained will improve the quality and relevance of learning in public primary schools. The training is facilitated by Rwanda Basic Education Board (REB) through the Government of Rwanda initiative Rwanda Education Quality Improvement Programme (RwandaEQUIP).
RwandaEQUIP is a programme designed to improve teaching and learning in primary schools, where each student receives the effective, equitable and engaging education they need to reach their full unique potential. The initiative, which is in its second year, targets improved learning outcomes for students by empowering teachers in more than 750 government and government aided schools by 2024. Technology enabled transformation of the primary education system is an essential part of realizing Rwanda’s Vision 2050 to becoming a knowledgebased economy” said Hon. Gaspard Twagirayezu, the Minister of State in charge of Primary and Secondary education during his visit to the thousands of trainees. How it works According to Marie Merci Twiringiyimana, a RwandaEQUIP trainer, headteachers are equipped with the skills, resources and the technology required to approve efficiency, productivity, and decisionmaking at their schools. “We showed them how they can use technology to support teachers to deliver
lesson guides efficiently as they transform instruction in their classroom.” Head teachers are given a smart phone with applications that provide digital insights on what is happening in every classroom; attendance, lesson delivery & learning outcomes in real time. The teachers are also equipped with teacher guides and classroom management techniques that boost pupil engagement and creativity. These teacher tablets contain well researched and carefully designed daily lesson guides built around the Rwandan curriculum.
The teacher guides help teachers overcome challenges that they used to encounter while designing their lesson plans. Teachers are able to focus more on teaching rather than planning and also deliver lessons in a coherent and easy-to-understand format. “However, the teachers can only access the detailed teacher guides while they are at school. They are required to sync their teacher guides to the head teacher’s smart device where they mark arrival and departure on a daily basis. After signing arrival at school, the head teacher enables hotspot and shares internet with teachers so they can access and download the lesson guides,” she said.
Josephine Mukashyaka, the Head teacher of G.S Uwinkomo in Nyamagabe district, who is among the trainees said: “previously, the teachers had to sign in books to mark attendance-arrival and departurebut some would skip and others could be absent in classrooms. I can also see when pupils start
and finish their lessons, which helps me track their progress,” she said.
Teachers’ reactions to the new teaching methodology
Emmanuel Ngiruwonsanga, a teacher at Ecole Primaire Uwinkingi in Nyamagabe district, is among teachers who were trained and given tablets to improve instruction and class management. “I have been teaching for 32 years. We used to spend a lot of time preparing lesson plans and writing notes in many exercise books. Sometimes it was difficult to access some teaching materials and this was affecting our performance. “However, this is going to change after getting the teacher tablets. These tablets contain well developed lesson plans and teaching materials, and we will have more time to support pupils and give time to those who are struggling,” he said.
Chantal Mukanoheri, a teacher at Kiziguro Catholique Primary school in Ngororero district, hailed the training programme explaining that the technology will ease teachers’ work and improve both teachers and learners’ performance. “Preparing lesson plans and teaching was taking us a lot of time. We would spend a long time looking for teaching materials and sometimes would not get them. As a result, we did not have enough time to engage pupils and finish the teaching schedule. Now the tablets with lesson plans and teaching aids will guide us on what to teach on time. This will improve the quality of education,” she said. She added that the technologyenabled teaching will also improve English speaking skills for both teachers and learners. “The teaching technique emphasises instruction using English. We have also learned English songs, cheers, energisers that we shall use to motivate pupils and encourage positive behaviour in classrooms,” she noted.
Vestine Uwimana, a teacher at Ecole Primaire de Rushaki in Gicumbi district, said the main challenge she was facing before the training was lack of enough time to prepare notes, assessments, quizzes and teach at the same time.
“The tablet will reduce the time we used to spend on filing a lot of teaching documents while marking teacher and pupil presence in class, and spend it on improving learners’ performance.”
In addition, we have learnt how to encourage positive behaviour and correct pupils’ behaviours. Alex Nsengimana, a teacher from Nyamagabe district,
said that the tech-enabled teaching methodology will also improve pupil’s confidence and speaking skills. “A pupil would reach primary six without the ability to speak and read effectively. The tech-enabled teaching methodology we were trained on has come as a solution, and if possible, should be scaled up to more schools” he said. According to Gerard Murasira, the director of teacher training at Rwanda Basic Education Board (REB), 4,500 head teachers and teachers from 150 public primary schools are undergoing training on technologyenabled teaching and effective class management from August 23 to September 23, 2022. The previous training was conducted in January 2022 for 3000 teachers in 100 schools.
Global call for Transformative Education The teacher training is happening at a time when Governments are currently seeking for evidence-based solutions that will boost learning to recover from unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic-related learning losses due to school closures. At the recently concluded Common wealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda, heads of states reaffirmed the role of governments in further strengthening education systems to ensure accessible, affordable, high quality and inclusive education for all.
Next week, Government leaders across the world will be meeting at the United Nations Transforming Education Summit in New York, to stock of efforts to recover pandemic-related learning losses. The holistic and highly structured education methodology that the teachers are being trained on through RwandaEQUIP has been endorsed by a Nobel prize winning economist, Prof. Michael Kremer. The study conducted in East African schools by the Nobel Prize winner, confirmed the learning gains in the study are among the largest in the international education literature.
The study suggests that children receive 53 percent more learning over the course of their Early Childhood and primary school career compared to their peers taught using traditional methods. The study finds that after two years, primary school pupils, through Grade 6, are nearly a whole additional year ahead of pupils taught using traditional methods. For Early Childhood Development (ECD) - typically 3-5-year-old- pupils gain nearly an additional year and half of learning; learning in two years what pupils in other schools learn in three and a half years. Rwanda is using the methodology in this study to improve teaching and learning through RwandaEQUIP and hopes to see the same results across the country.
Manipur CM bats for improving government schools
Sunday, July 17, 2022
A great teacher is one a student cherishes forever, Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh said, in a speech on Saturday, adding that a disciplined teacher will only produce good and disciplined students. Singh was addressing at the graduation day ceremony of Phase-2 training-cum-valedictory programme of 10Day Induction Training Programme for teachers and headmasters of government schools at Tamphasana Girls Higher Secondary School in Imphal today.
On the occasion, the chief minister lauded and congratulated government school teachers and pointed out that government schools recorded a high pass percentage of above 60 percent in the recently declared High School Leaving Certificate (HSLC) Examination 2022 result. Singh further said teachers should set a target to achieve cent percent pass percentage next year. He said that the government will also honour and award teachers of government schools which secured high pass percentage in the recent HSLC examinations. “The government strives to provide good quality education for everyone,” he said.
He said that his government launched “School Fagathansi Mission” in 2018 with the same objective of improving school education. The chief minister claimed that the mission was very useful because since its launch, admission in government schools has increased tremendously. He said that around 180 schools have been covered under the mission for better infrastructure and overall improvement. Singh also appreciated the energy and confidence shown by the teachers during the function and said teachers
should approach their students with the same zeal as shown on the day. He said he can see smart, energetic teachers with a “Ready to do something” zeal in the teachers present today and said the credit should go to the STAR Education team.
The chief minister further said, “Today we could consider STAR education policy as a success and congratulated the minister, commissioner, director and their teams involved in the programme.” Meanwhile, the chief minister urged everyone to wear masks and take COVID vaccination in view of the rising trend of infections in the state. State education minister Th Basanta said that the chief minister has led from the front by encouraging all in bringing a sea of change in the state’s education sector. He said,
“Education is the foundation of any society and every advanced society developed due to their education system.”
During today’s programme, participants also shared their testimonials. A handing out of certificates to the participants, teachers’ tablets and headmasters’ smartphones to selected participants was also organized as part of the function. STAR Education Manipur stands for System Transformation and Rejuvenation of Education Manipur and is an ambitious initiative of the state government to transform the quality of public education across the state. It was launched in October 2021. A program under the Samagra Shiksha, Manipur and a component of the flagship School Fagathansi Mission, STAR Education’s induction training for teachers and headmasters involved over 1500 teachers and headmasters from over 250 schools from across the 16 districts of the state.
The first phase of the training was held from June 27 to July 6 at Tamphasana Girls Higher Secondary School, Imphal. The training programme was led by 56 staff from New Globe, including 24 trainers, eight international experts from New Globe’s Global team and a support staff.
Thursday, 19 January 2023
The ASER report
CIFP Editorial: In 2022, the BJP-led government introduced the ‘School Fagathansi Mission’ in a seemingly new perspective in a wider canvas. However, the focus seems to be directed more on development of physical infrastructure rather than overall development.
There is something interesting about the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 released this month, as opposed to the 2021 report. ASER is an annual survey conducted by the education nonprofit Pratham in rural areas of India. The survey was last conducted at this large scale in 2018. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022, Manipur witnessed an improvement in enrolment in government schools in Manipur with the proportion of children (age 6 to 14) enrolled in government school increasing from 28 per cent in 2018 to 32.8 per cent in 2022. This is the highest enrolment recorded in government schools after 2008, where 33.2 per cent of the children across the state were enrolled in government schools.
However, in comparison with neighbouring NE states, Manipur has the lowest government school enrolment as per the ASER report. The ASER report was released on Wednesday, the survey of which
was conducted in nine districts of Manipur comprising 262 villages and 4,859 households. The reports are prepared by the Pratham foundation based on a household telephonic survey conducted in rural areas across the country.
In the 2021 report, government school enrolment has fallen during this period in the northeast region, and the proportion of children not enrolled in school has increased. For Manipur, enrolment in government schools has fallen from 26.8 per cent in 2018 to 13.4 per cent in 2021. This has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the proportion of children currently not enrolled, from 1.1 per cent in 2018 to 15.5 per cent in 2021, as per the report.
The 2021 report was prepared after conducting a survey in 581 districts in 25 states and three Union Territories, between September and October. The state chief minister himself was not amused with the 2021 report, given the government’s push for overall improvement in the government school sector. However, the 2022 report is indeed encouraging for the government as its efforts seem to be paying dividends though marginally. But, one cannot achieve results overnight and it always takes gradual improvement.
What is now more important is identifying the thrust areas which have contributed to the increase in overall enrolment. We would like to reiterate that a holistic approach is always needed in the pursuit of a realistic overhaul of the school education system and the primary objective of the government should rather be on how to impart basic knowledge systems to the school going kids so as to enthral the growing mind and develop capabilities to surprise us with new ideas and imagination while all other approaches should be secondary to the prime objective.
We do not have much to say about the STAR education policy as we are yet to witness the results in real time. But, we intend to discuss the School Fagathansi Mission. In recent times, school education in Manipur has become a fertile ground for experimenting with projects for ‘development’ of government schools.
The so-called projects, though well intended, lack a holistic approach for all-round development or for overhauling the school education system in the state which had all along been plagued with so many ailments and inconsistencies.
The thought process of the policy planners and political bosses always seems to work on piecemeal basis and at the end, it always seems to boil down to development of physical infrastructure. Previous governments and ministers have tried to address the issue in their own way. A few have introduced the idea of model schools in the different districts, equipping the so-called model districts with new infrastructure and facilities and posting good teachers.
Yet, it failed to garner the desired performance of students from these model schools while on the other hand it enriched favoured contractors who were entrusted with repairing and refurbishing the schools, and supplying new furniture besides other items. In 2022, the BJP-led government also introduced the ‘School Fagathansi Mission’ in a seemingly new perspective in a wider canvas. However, the focus seems to be directed more on development of physical infrastructure rather than overall development. The same basic principle of infrastructure development or improvement and infusion of more teachers to the identified schools is at work here.
CM lauds Govt school teachers
Saturday, 16 July 2022
Chief Minister N Biren Singh has lauded and congratulated Government school teachers as Government schools recorded a high pass percentage of above 60 percent in the recently declared High School Leaving Certificate (HSLC) Examination 2022 result.
The Chief Minister was speaking as the chief guest at the Graduation Day ceremony of Phase 2 training cum valedictory programme of 10-Day Induction Training Programme for teachers and Headmasters of Government schools at Tamphasana Girls Higher Secondary School, Old Lambulane, today.
The Chief Minister further said the teachers should set a target to achieve cent percent pass percentage next year. He said that the Government would also honour and award teachers of Government Schools which had secured high pass percentage in the recent HSLC Examination. The Government has been striving to provide quality education to everyone, he said, explaining that the School Fagathansi Mission was launched in 2018 with the objective of improving school education.
The Chief Minister said the School Fagathansi Mission has been very useful and admission in Government schools has increased tremendously since its launch. He said that around 180 schools have been covered under the mission for better infrastructure and overall improvement.
N Biren also appreciated the energy and confidence shown by the teachers during the function and said the teachers should approach their students with the same zeal as shown today.
Discipline is everything, he said, explaining that a disciplined teacher will only produce good and disciplined students. He said he can see smart, energetic teachers with a “ready to do something” zeal today and said the credit should go to the STAR Education team. “Today we could consider STAR Education policy as a success and congratulated
the Minister, Commissioner, Director and their teams involved in the programme”, Biren said.
Meanwhile, the Chief Minister also urged everyone to wear mask and take COVID vaccination. Education Minister Th Basanta said that the Chief Minister has been leading from the front by encouraging all in bringing a sea change in the State’s education sector. He said education is the foundation of any society and every advanced society developed due to their education system. He appealed to the teachers participating the training to inspire their students and fellow teachers and further said that the top priority should be given to students and how to make students improve their performances.
“Let us fully implement the “No School Bag Day” on Saturdays and dedicate the day to educate the students on social skills and others”, Basanta said. Today’s programme was also attended by Saikot AC MLA Paolienlal Haokip, Commissioner, Education (S) H Gyan Prakash, Director, Education (S) and Samagra Shiksha, Manipur L Nandakumar Singh and Vice President Policy and Partnerships, New Globe Sujatha Muthayya, among others.
STAR Education Manipur stands for System Transformation and Rejuvenation of Education Manipur and is an ambitious initiative of the State Government to transform quality of public education across the State. It was launched by the Chief Minister in October 2021. A programme under the Samagra Shiksha, Manipur and a component of the flagship School Fagathansi Mission, STAR Education’s induction training for teachers and Headmasters involved over 1500 teachers and Headmasters from over 250 schools from across the 16 districts of the State. The first phase of the training was held from June 27 to July 6 at Tamphasana Girls Higher Secondary School, Imphal. The training programme was led by 56 staff from New Globe including 24 trainers, eight international experts and support staff.
