Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the executive governor of Lagos State through his administration’s EKOEXCEL, a basic education reform programme is improving pupils in public primary schools which is the main target.
According to the EKOEXCEL 2020-2021 endline fluency and numeracy evaluation, EKOEXCEL pupils are making remarkable progress in oral reading fluency and foundational numeracy compared to their performance prior to the commencement of the initiative.
The report states that an average primary 3 EKOEXCEL pupil can now read at nearly the same fluency level as an average primary 5 pupil from before the launch of the programme.
Wahab Alawiye-King, the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (LASUBEB’s) executive chairman, responding to the report’s findings, expressed his delight, promising that it is only the beginning of EKOEXCEL’s positive impacts.
“I am most delighted that the study showed the meaningful impacts of EKOEXCEL on our pupils and things will only get better, going forward. We have taken key learning’s from the report and will address areas of concern,” he said.
The assessment report stated that on average, EKOEXCEL primary 2-3 pupils are outperforming 13 other country contexts on the International Common Assessment of Numeracy (ICAN) while primary 4-6 ranked third out of 14 country contexts on the same numeracy assessment.
Adebayo Adefuye, a permanent board member of LASUBEB and oversight chair of the EKOEXCEL programme, also expressed his delight, noting that there would be further improvements by the time the next evaluation is done.
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“We are happy with the report’s findings and we take it as further motivation to work harder and achieve more milestones. We are surely not going to rest on our oars until our public school system becomes significantly better, with parents and pupils themselves attesting to the positive changes,” Adefuye said.
Crucially, the evaluation affirms that EKOEXCEL is both improving learning over what existed before and it is continuing to improve learning with the programme, over time.
The study, which was conducted in July 2021 involved researchers administering two assessments to primary 1-6 pupils. The tests were an oral reading fluency assessment (using a primary 2 passage and a grade-level passage) and a foundational numeracy assessment (using ICAN).
The EKOEXCEL programme not only mitigated learning loss; it actually accelerated learning amidst a global learning crisis.
Besides, EKOEXCEL pupils are performing well when compared with other international contexts.
Adefuye disclosed that going forward, the programme would focus on ensuring that the average pupil is meeting or exceeding international fluency benchmarks, and also that EKOEXCEL pupils outperform other comparable contexts on more complex foundational numeracy competencies.
The governor’s wish and desire, he stated, is that pupils of public primary schools receive quality instructions that would be beneficial to them and in the long run, so Lagosians will be happy to have EKOEXCEL.
Sanwo-Olu launched EKOEXCEL in 2019 to provide quality education to both the rich and the poor and upskill teachers leveraging technology.
So far, over 18,000 headteachers and teachers have been moved from analogue to digital teaching, using tablets and updated curricula. Over 14,000 primary school teachers from 1,017 public primary schools have been captured under the scheme.
