Two Years of Excellence in Education Reforms in Lagos

BY JIDE OMOJOLOMOJU

The acronym EKOEXCEL stands for excellence in child education and learning. It is an education transformation initiative of the Lagos State Government aimed at repositioning basic education in the state. It is also intended to enhance teacher effectiveness by leveraging technology to support, train and motivate teachers to improve children learning outcome at the primary school level.

Under the initiative, some improvement has been recorded in school activities, including the enrollment of over 418,000 public primary school pupils; pupils’ attendance has improved from 37 per cent to 74 per cent; teachers’ attendance also improved by 90 per cent; while the pupils’ are reading an average of 311 per cent more correct words per minute and 87 per cent of parents confirm that children have improved since the commencement of the initiative in Lagos public primary school.

EKOEXCEL was co-authored by The Education Partnership Centre, in partnership with the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (LASUBEB). It has dramatically accelerated student literacy and numeracy performance, showing statistically significant differences between student performances in EKOEXCEL schools versus their peers in traditional schools.

Pupils studying under the programme have advanced in numeracy two times as fast as the pupils in traditional schools. In literacy, the contrast was even greater, with EKOEXCEL pupils progressing three times as fast as their peers in comparable schools.

EKOEXCEL also has more supportive learning environments and more positive behavioral expectations compared to non EKOEXCEL schools. The classrooms are 85 per cent more likely to set positive behaviour expectations and 45 per cent more likely to have a supportive learning environment.

EKOEXCEL girls were more likely to attend school than girls in status quo classrooms; while attendance for boys across programme and status quo schools was similarly strong at 92 and 93 per cent, respectively.

Also, EKOEXCEL classrooms were rated high on two critical determinants of classroom culture: Supportive Learning Environment and Positive Behavioral Expectations.

EKOEXCEL also has Self- Study Activity Packets (SSAP), which are scientifically-based, to help pupils studying at home, practice and learn core concepts from the Nigerian syllabus.

The SSAPs include sufficient practice problems, comprehension passages and other activities that help pupils progress through the core topics of the Lagos curriculum.

Each week, new EKOEXCEL@Home SSAPs are available for each grade level to be accessed free online. Pupils can also access past daily activity packets for additional practice and revision.

The SSAPs are available for kindergarten, nursery 1 and 2 and primary 1 to 5. Not only that, they are parentfriendly, with adequate audio learning materials.

As it is with every government initiatives, there have been criticisms trailing the initiative. However, despite the attending criticism of the initiative, parents of EKOEXCEL pupils, a critical stakeholder segment, have nothing but praises for the initiative.

The Sanwo-Olu-led administration has insisted that it will not adopt or embark on an education system that does not ensure the delivery of 21st century benefits of a modern-day primary education system.

Findings revealed that the programme was designed in line with the National Curriculum on Education, with the lessons fully aligned to the Lagos State Scheme of Work, which is by extension aligned to the National Curriculum.

Speaking on the main challenges of the initiative, the Executive Chairman of the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board, Wahab Alawiye-King, a former member of the Lagos State House of Assembly and the current Dean of the Forum of SUBEB Chairmen in Nigeria, said that some of the initial challenges of the EKOEXCEL initiative included “technical glitches, comparison of traditional methods of teaching with the new methods, lesson completion rate,” among others.

He however assured that the programme is doing excellently well, adding that a lot of teething issues have been addressed.