Abiola Seriki-Ayeni is the director-general, Office of Education Quality Assurance (OEQA), Lagos State. Under her watch, the office has ensured holistic conduct of Whole School Evaluation (WSE) through assessment of the quality of teaching and learning in both government and private schools in Lagos.
As DG of OEQA, Seriki-Ayeni has brought forward several concepts and innovations to shape the vision of education for excellence in Lagos, using the 21st Century techniques in line with the T.H.E.M.E.S Agenda of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s administration. In this interview, she speaks on measures that the OEQA has put in place for quality education delivery in Lagos State. Joshua Bassey brings excerpts:
Could you tell us a bit about your background?
I attended my primary and secondary education in Nigeria. When I finished my first Masters Degree Programme in the USA, I decided to come back to Nigeria for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). At that time, there was limited information and research about education in Nigeria. I was posted to The National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), a corporate services unit in the E&P Directorate of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which supervises the Nigerian Petroleum Exchange (NIPEX) registration.
I was posted to the public affairs department. I realised that the newspapers we got at the office had a section for education, so as I was cutting and doing the work I needed to, I began to curate information. At that time, Oby Ezekwesili, Nigeria’s former minister of education, was always in the news and was really making a lot of impact with some of her key programmes like “Operation Reach All Primary Schools and Operation Reach All Secondary Schools.” I was inspired by her. This encouraged me to stay within the education sector.
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As DG, what project have you initiated and what impact have you recorded?
My first is what we call the Forward to School Initiative, which came about as a result of COVID-19 when schools were globally closed. We had to figure out how we could prepare schools to reopen. We also used it as an opportunity to gather data that needed to be updated. We took the Federal Government guidelines on reopening and created a course, which I facilitated online. All teachers, school leaders and board members were mandated to take the certified course. The course guided the teachers on what to do and at the end, they were asked to submit key plans on communication, learning, health and safety and operations. We had about 60,000 teachers who were registered with the office. It was a big deal.
Another thing I would say was a huge win was the fact that during COVID-19, the schools could write to us, they were not scared; they knew that when they write us, we would be at their school with officials from the health and safety ministry in less than 24hrs.
They knew that they didn’t have to run away from us, they knew that they had to write a letter to the parents, communicating what was happening.
We also created COVID response document guidance in schools. We told them shutting down the schools was the last option, as long as they did all the things we told them to do. For us, it was a great achievement because we were able to garner public confidence.
Another thing I would say I am really proud of is the fact that we have an incident reporting tool, which is available online. From the comfort of their home or car, schools could report any incident to our office. Of course, we have people that attend to them physically too, and we encourage that because the government wants to ensure that there is continuity of documentation.
On the incident reporting tool, we have had over 1,500 incidents that have been reported, ranging in level of severity. We treat all of them and we also go to schools for investigative issues. We go with a holistic team from the Ministry of Youth and Social Development, and Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency. We don’t go alone.
Also, upon approval by the Commissioner for Education, we have been able to recommend and shut down about 27 schools within the state. Before, if schools were closed, there was no record of it, nor was that done in a systematic way; but now, we do investigate, we visit multiple times, invite the school, probe and if it needs to be closed, we recommend closure.
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Why did you choose to operate in the public sector?
No matter what ideas you have about what you want to do in education, you cannot leverage the type of impact that the government can have in the private sector. If you can get it right in education, you can transform an entire nation. I consider it an opportunity for me to reach more people and impact more lives. The government has its own terrain that one needs to be able to learn and navigate. If you look at the population of Lagos and the population of children within the state, you can make a tremendous impact.
When you look at the mandate of the Office of Education Quality Assurance, which is focused on quality in all schools through standardisation, monitoring and evaluation, it’s like literally holding our future in our hands. If we can get these things right, we will get the education sector right.
Technology is very important in the classroom. How do you incorporate technology into what you do?
You can’t give what you don’t have. We can’t expect the students and teachers to be tech-savvy if we are not. Mr. Governor ensured that all our evaluators had tablets. There is an online platform called School Improvement Coach. When evaluators go to this platform, they fill out forms to measure their coverage in their area of assignment after which it is collated. When the evaluators do this, it helps the schools to keep track of their responsibility.
We also have an online course in collaboration with the Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency (DSVA) to ensure that all teachers in the state take this course.
We made it compulsory for every teacher. It’s a four-hour course and at no charge.
It can be accessed from our website, OEQALagos.com. We have over 17,000 certified educators for this particular course. The government believes there is a need for teachers to upskill and work around their schedules.
In terms of technology, another thing we have is the Lesplore Literacy Project. For this project, we partnered with consultants. Normally, one has to pay for the licence, but we were able to negotiate that for the pilot, we wouldn’t pay, so, we partnered with them to ensure that we were able to monitor the reading assessment of students. We piloted it with both the government and private schools.
Lesplore uses a screen, a keyboard and an eye tracker, and as the child is reading, it is tracking how long the child is spending on a particular word and it notifies when a child has a problem with a word. This enables one to get the reading level of the child between two and five minutes. Normally for a whole class, if you are lucky, you can be done in two weeks. The literacy project also gives interventions to teachers about how to improve their jobs.
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Can you tell us more about the Lagos Learns Together Initiative (LLT)?
This initiative was conceived to promote distance / remote learning among learners to ensure continuity in learning, especially during emergencies. As a result, we developed learning packs to serve as additional resources to the existing learning curriculum or scheme of work. It can be downloaded online.
The Lagos Learns Together platform was launched on March 18, 2021, and was developed in physical and digital formats with regular updates. LLT learning packs are distributed physically and virtually across the various categories of students in the state. The initiative has a functional website to serve as a repository of learning materials, news and information with the mindset of reaching out to students in over 20,000 government primary and secondary schools including approved and unapproved private schools located in slums, rural, riverine areas and centres of the state. Over 10,000 learners have benefited from this initiative.
