Schools must adopt holistic learning to expand value-based education – Koiki

The constant revolution in the education space has necessitated the need to adopt a holistic approach to learning by educational institutions in order to expand value-based education, Lai Koiki, executive director of Greensprings School, Lagos, has said.

Koiki said a holistic approach to learning involves not just academic advancements of students, but entails a focus on all other aspects of a child’s growth.

This, she said, can be achieved, not only through the use of best practices, technology and purpose-built infrastructure but especially through experienced and dedicated teachers who work as a team to create an effective learning environment.

Koiki said this while announcing the theme for the new school year as, ‘IGNITE #DeeperHolisticLearning at the annual in-service training held at the school’s Lekki campus.

Providing more details on the concept, Feyisara Ojugo, deputy director of Education at Greensprings, said the school’s focus for the 2023/2024 session is to intensify initiatives introduced in the last school year; therefore, the new theme is aimed at consolidating the last year’s gains.

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She said it was inspired by how far the school, were able to go last year with its ‘Future Ready #DrivenByValue’ theme.

“We introduced a number of initiatives in the previous school year, like coding in all class categories, Value-Based Education (VbE), Nigerian Languages in Preschool, the establishment of Centers of Excellence on different campuses and a host of others,” she said.

Ojugo further said that as the school dug into each aspect, it became clear that there was still more depth to go, particularly in the production of tangibles to showcase students’ learning, adding that this inspired the new school year’s theme to deepen its holistic educational approach.

Providing details of the school plans, the educationist said that some of the areas the school plans to deepen learning include extending coding classes to involve building robots and tangible projects through a partnership with Coderina.org.

According to her, there is also going to be the hosting of a grand “STEAM Week” where students would showcase their works/talents in science, technology, coding, art and mathematics; and expansion of Value-Based Education through Service Learning initiative, which allows students build portfolios and earn recognition for their service contributions in their communities.

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Ojugo also said that the students are not the only ones who will be going deeper in their learning because the school’s staff are also included.

“Greensprings as a Thinking School, is very much invested in the personal and professional development of its staff. This is one of the reasons we organised our annual INSET, which avails our workforce the opportunity to undergo different educational workshops. We will continue to increase the capacity of our staff through relevant training and provide the necessary resources to support all the different areas,” she disclosed.

Greensprings School was established in 1985. The school’s campuses are located at Anthony, Ikoyi, and Lekki Lagos.