Enugu State government has called on all teachers and students in the state to embrace and key into Nigeria Learning Passport to enhance their learning standard and bridge the gap occasionally created by nature that disrupts school curriculum.
Samuel Otuanya, the state commissioner for education, disclosed this at College of Immaculate Conception (CIC) Enugu, while lunching the Nigeria Learning Passport, and also described technology as an indispensable tool in learning.
He commended the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for partnering the state to ensure success in almost all the education programmes.
“UNICEF had assisted the state in various ways and also assisted in making sure the Nigeria Learning Passport is launched in Enugu”, he said.
Otuanya also thanked the Federal Ministry of Education and the Global Partnership For education for their contributions to see the development of learning passport in Nigeria.
“When Covid-19 came around everybody was afraid, schools were shut down and children had no continuity of learning, making people to start looking for alternative for the children at home”, he said.
During that time, the state, according to him, reintroduced radio programmes that were used in the 70 and 80s to learn.
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“A good teacher can teach and put it into the app for many students and learning can take place anywhere and at any time”.
“The advantage of it is that a teacher who knows a particular subject and how to impact the knowledge will be contracted to teach such a subject and post into the app and every student will have access to it”.
In the opening remark, Hillary Ozo, field office representative, UNICEF Enugu, described the innovation as wonderful because it is like improving access of children to learn, especially children in secondary and basic level educations.
“This is a wonderful opportunity. We are all witnesses to the fact that there have been distractions occasioned by act of nature, for instance Covid-19 pandemic impacted school system, forcing many students to stay at home for a long time. With the learning passport that improves access, especially through use of smart mobile phones. It will help many children to access educational contents to improve their knowledge and understanding of several subjects in their school curriculum”, Ozo said.
“Unicef is a partner with the Enugu State government, through the ministry of education we work collaboratively to enhance the opportunities that come from this new learning form”.
Also Celestine Ngwu, technical assistance to the commissioner for Education Enugu State and Enugu State team lead for Nigeria Learning Passport, said the learning passport is as an app developed by Microsoft in conjunction with Global Partnership For Education and UNICEF, and not only for Nigeria.
He said it was occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic, which sent children out of school, hence so many education practitioners devised means to cushion the effect on children. It also made UNICEF and GPE to come up with the learning passport, which they took to different part of the world and Federal Ministry of Education embrace it since then they have been training teachers and other officers on the learning passport.
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