Chiamaka Okoro, a mid-level manager in a financial institution, was unable to find a suitable Physics teacher for her child in September 2018.
In October, she stumbled on Tuteria while surfing the Internet. She was linked with a Physics teacher who had 15 years of experience. Okoro paid Tuteria and the online platform in turn paid the teacher.
Tuteria monitored the teacher-student relationship while it lasted. The tutoring app has over 10,000 teachers on its platform from where students seeking tutors on key school subjects, including bag- and shoe-making, can select.
Godwin Benson, 29, founded this platform after leaving his job at Deloitte in 2015. He taught a man’s child for a month but he wasn’t paid for his services. In order to minimise such incident from happening to teachers, he set up the app.
“We are working on connecting students in the Diaspora with teachers,” Peace Cole, chief operating officer, Tuteria, told BusinessDay in a telephone chat.
“We connect people with already vetted teachers who can help them achieve their goals,” Cole said.
Like Tuteria, a number of start-ups are showing that Nigerians can solve their education problems through digital platforms.
Prepclass, for instance, houses over 20,000 tutors that can help give pupils and students tutorials and after-school lessons.
Perhaps, only those living in busy cities such as Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Aba, Kano and Kaduna will appreciate how tough it is to find quality teachers with good moral compass.
Tutor.NG and co are helping to find them, enabling Nigerians to find experts on basic school courses, public speaking, bead making, cooking, mobile app development, among others.
At the launch of the platform in 2014, Peter Ogedengbe, co-founder of Tutor.NG, said the platform would solve the problem of learning beyond the classrooms and create employment for smart and versatile graduates.
Today in Nigeria, students have access to Raadaa, a start-up that helps researchers to find reliable works. Research works can be uploaded or downloaded on the platform to improve access to academic materials and journals, thereby breaking the barriers against limited research.
The number of out-of-school children has risen from 10.5 million in 2010 to 13.2 million in 2015, according to Demographic Health Survey conducted by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and the Nigerian government.
Seventy-five million Nigerians (38 percent) are illiterate in 2018, according to the National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non-Formal Education. This number was 35 million in 2013, the then minister of education had said that year.
Only 39.4 percent of Nigerian children of primary school age are currently enrolled in school, according to a Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICs) 5 of 2016 and 2017 conducted by NBS and UNICEF.
To prevent high levels of illiteracy and increased out-of-school children, EduRecords has stepped in to track the performance of students and teachers. It keeps records of students and teachers against losses, damage or alteration; monitors children or school affairs from any part of the world, and provides performance analysis on children. It checks continuous decline in students’ performances as well as decline in enrolment rates, thus enabling parents to learn the performances of their children.
These days, students can also learn on their own at Bilyak Consulting Firm’s online app known as ‘mAcademy’.
Students, teachers, and parents are able to access past questions of school and professional examinations, curricula and other key information in the education sector.
“E-learning is an innovation that has come to stay,” said Eze Onyeka, chief executive officer, Value Spring Group of Schools, Okota, Lagos.
“Now, students learn through technology. We carry out our lessons through computer and projectors. Students glance through it, see the pictures, see the illustrations and they make notes from everything,” he explained.
Nigeria ranks tops in terms of the number of African students studying in the United States, according to the 2017 Open Doors Report released in November 2018. Data from the World Education News and Reviews (WENR) show that every year, number of Nigerian students moving into foreign universities increase by no fewer than 10 percent. ScholarX provides scholarship opportunities to ensure Nigerians know where education opportunities exist at minimal costs.
Comfort Okere, head teacher, May Day School, Isolo, Lagos, said students now use computer which makes the innovation palatable.
“Every student has a laptop in my school, for instance. So, the time students used to copy notes for so long, the teacher uses that time to explain topics to students and they ask questions. Afterwards, the teacher forwards their notes to their e-mails. That is one of the ways,” Okere said.
Odinaka Anudu, Joseph Maurice Ogu & Gbemi Faminu
