Education is the pathway to economic development and wealth creation. Little wonders why most of the countries that are developed, highly innovative and prosperous are leaders educationally. Godwin Obaseki, Edo State’s governor is on course to make Edo State primus inter pares in Nigeria educationally.
In Edo State, public primary and junior secondary schools resumed for the third term on 9, May 2022. Meanwhile, during the short holiday, an interesting development took place. Four basic education sector professional development exercises were organized across the state in a bid to get teachers well-prepared for the tasks ahead.
Headteachers, principals, education secretaries, school heads and other school leaders from April 5 to 8, attended a 3-day summit in Benin City which was aimed at upskilling them on the job.
Further, on 27 April, another set of school leaders were trained in their various local government areas, through a programme blended with virtual presentations disseminated centrally from Benin City.
Prior to resumption, Quality Assurance Officers (QAOs), Learning and Development Officers (LDOs) in the three senatorial districts of the state met to undergo a training that now enables them to prepare for an impending audit and plan for school resumption. This training comes on the back of two pronouncements that show that Governor Godwin Obaseki is ahead in the basic education sector reform curve.
While addressing a group of engineers on 13th April 2022, Hamid Bobboyi, Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) expressed concerns over poor learning outcomes in basic education in Nigeria.
Bobboyi who was obviously pained, blamed the state of basic education on a few factors, prominent among them were lack of regular professional training programmes for teachers and low remuneration.
A few earlier, Geofferry Njoku, UNICEF’s Communications Specialist, declared that: ‘‘It is about time we focused on learning for children through teacher training, changing the curriculum and changing the quality of education.”
Njoku spoke at a media dialogue event on foundational literacy and numeracy where among other things, UNICEF noted that Nigeria was going through learning poverty, as 70 percent of 10-year-olds who are in school cannot understand a simple sentence or perform basic numeracy tasks.
Steps ahead
Through the power of foresight, and as far back as 2018 in Edo State, Governor Obaseki addressed these emerging national challenges through EdoBEST.
Ever since, the basic education sector in Edo State has recorded many successes in that as many as 11,000 teachers were trained to enable them deliver lessons better with the help of technology. Some personnel in the school system were even sent abroad to gain knowledge that is relevant to the 21st century education system management. Again, no effort has been spared at ensuring that pupils in the state-owned primary and junior secondary schools achieve superior learning outcomes.
Late in 2021, junior secondary schools were officially handed over to the Ozavize Salami led Edo State Universal Basic Education Board (Edo SUBEB) for better management and administration.
Read also: Obaseki kicks off ‘operation plan Edo’
Fast forward to February 2022, the EdoBEST programme had been successfully extended to 232 junior secondary schools and 148 primary schools considered as hard-to-reach and riverine schools which have been neglected by successive state reforms before the Governor Obaseki era.
The focus of the governor on the professional development of teachers is understandable. At a recent graduation ceremony for EdoBEST training inductees in Benin City, the governor noted that “No society develops without teachers. Teachers are at the heart of the EdoBEST reform.”
“You are very very important to us,” he told teachers in February 2022 as they concluded their EdoBEST induction training. “We are ready to go to any length to get resources to train you, because you are the ones driving the reform,” Obaseki said amidst applause from teachers.
To this end, the basic education system has been impacted positively.
Principals who were part of the EdoBEST Induction training in February attested to the impact of the training.
“This training has been beautiful and awesome, my expectation has been met because this is a new dawn in the history of education in Edo State,” one of the beneficiaries said in a televised interview.
“This training will help us manage the school better, especially for a school like mine which is large. With the knowledge I have gained here, it means technology is coming in instead of analogue and we have been taught here the things we didn’t even know before.
“With these tablets provided by the government, it will be much easier to manage the school because, for instance, attendance, we don’t have to do it manually again, and we just have to click and the records are taken.
“And teaching is going to be very very effective. You don’t have to monitor the teachers running up and down. You can stand in one point and monitor the teachers,” she said.
Another EdoBEST Induction trainee, Confidence Ojale Osayende noted that “during the training programme, we have been told that no child is dull. All children should be motivated towards learning. The classroom is not just for the top-performing pupils, it is also for the average pupils who should be encouraged to reach their full potential”, she said
“I am mostly delighted that teachers have the opportunity to learn and unlearn. I am saying to Governor Godwin Obaseki, Good Job you’’, she added.
In recognition for its innovation and emphasis on improving learning outcomes among pupils, EdoBEST is the only subnational programme that is part of the World Bank Accelerator Programme.
