British Council Restates Support for Schools’ Devt

The British Council in Nigeria has said it would continue to support schools in the country to improve core skills among young people.

The Director of Programmes, Mrs. Louisa Waddingham made this known during the International School Award (ISA) ceremony recently in Lagos recently.

The ISA award is a global benchmarking project that recognises the outstanding work done by schools that are committed to developing international dimension in the curriculum to assist young learners to become effective global citizens.

It also provides a framework for schools to develop an action plan and implement international activities throughout the year and encourages schools to collaborate with schools overseas that will create a rich learning experience for students through the use if ICT .

Waddingham said the award is important to the council because for many years, it has worked with schools and supported education systems globally, adding that the award enables the council to value and appreciate schools as they make progress towards inculcating internationalism into their schools and their behaviours and the way they run their affairs.

“The ISA award really recognises how schools develop their young people to be global citizens, so that they can think globally and act locally. What we have today is a lot of strong community projects that the students have done and also what they have learnt about other cultures.

She said Nigeria is one of the 16 countries where the award is being held. “They have standards they need to meet so when the school in Nigeria qualifies and gets the award, it demonstrates that it has a very high international standard

“To win this award, the school needs to go through nine stages and in each stages, it is quite stressful/ interesting for them and it means they have to introduce new themes into the schools, new ways of working and teaching, as well as running their whole school affairs.’’

The director added that the task is demanding, but when they come out of it, they are more able to cope with life challenges and new events that are going to come up.

She said it would also enable schools to teach their students how to adapt and be resilient in all that will happen in their life time, adding that a total of eight schools in Nigeria qualified for the award in 2018 and not less than 22 schools in all have so far been awarded the recognition in Nigeria in the annual event.

Responding, one of the awardees, the Proprietress of MD Schools, Mrs. Omolara Adejugbe said the school would intensify efforts to sustain the standard already attained. She said the school has always embarked on projects, researches, as well as reached out to its host communities.

“We had this connecting classroom projects with our partner schools both in UK, Bangladesh and India. These are the activities we engaged in for the past one year. However, before then we already had partner schools in the UK and some other places.

“Right now, it is not about being singled out to be honoured by collecting awards. It is the easiest thing to do but sustainability is actually key. I can say comfortably that with this award, we are only just starting, as it will spur us to do more.

“We do not want to be ex-champions, we need to stay relevant as we will strive to look at those things that will help us stay relevant,” Adejugbe said.

She dedicated the award to her entire school management team for their commitment and doggedness in going for the best.