When Mrs. Jacqueline Namah-Nabena of Community Primary School Opolo, Yenagoa comes into school this morning, she will pick up her government-issued teacher tablet and head to the headteacher’s office.
A short meeting will follow before she, alongside other teachers, will walk towards an open space in the school for morning devotion with the circa 1,500 children in the school.
At the short meeting with the headteacher, a process called syncing is carried out in which Mrs. Namah-Nabena’s teacher tablet will be paired with the headteacher’s smartphone. This process allows for marking the exact time of her arrival in school, transfer of vital information, teaching guides and other bits of information relevant to classroom management into her tablet.
Since February 2023, this has been the practice in 222 schools across Bayelsa State where the state government is combating the literacy challenge that is facing much of the developing world, including Nigeria.
Last September, Nigeria’s ministry of Education revealed that an estimated over 76 million adults in Nigeria are non-literates, representing over 30 percent of the population of Africa’s most populous nation.
As the global community marks International Literacy Day with the theme – Promoting literacy for a world in transition: Building the foundation for sustainable and peaceful societies, the need for the deployment of literacy as a tool for building a sustainable, peaceful society is at the centre of the conversation. But Africa and most countries on the continent are pacing behind.
A note released by UNESCO in September 2022 indicated that only a third of 10-year-olds globally are estimated to be able to read and understand a simple written story. The rest around two-thirds (64%) are unable to cover this marker for minimum proficiency in reading comprehension.
In Nigeria, the situation is grim. “No fewer than 70 per cent of children in Nigerian schools are suffering from learning poverty (a situation where 10-year-olds cannot read or understand a simple text),” UNESCO said of Nigeria.
BayelsaPRIME, the signature basic education reform programme of the Bayelsa State government aims to address that anomaly using a tech-based approach coupled with learning methods that have been affirmed to deliver superior learning outcomes by Nobel prize-winning Professor of Economics Michael Kremer (Based on research conducted in Kenya).
Since February, the government of Bayelsa State has procured over 5,280 teacher tablets, smartphones and power banks in a bid to address the issue of learning poverty in its schools.
At present over 41,000 children in 222 schools with over 2,000 teachers benefit from the reform which is designed to significantly improve their literacy and numeracy skills as they prepare for lifelong learning.
Back in 2022 when the National Ministry of Education presented its literacy findings at a conference, Goodluck Opiah, the Minister of State for Education, noted that “as we collectively forge ahead in the utilisation of digital modernisation as offered by emerging global technologies, Nigeria has adopted a holistic approach that involves all key stakeholders in meeting the learning needs of youths and adults of different profiles and in different environments.”
Indeed, Bayelsa is among the few states that have gone the extra mile. Like Edo, Lagos, Kwara and more recently, Ekiti, Bayelsa has been a champion of basic education reform.
The BayelsaPRIME way
Implementation of BayelsaPRIME began with a comprehensive survey which established the state of numeracy and literacy of children in public schools in the state. As expected, there was a lot of intervention to be done.
A comprehensive plan was put in place to cover these gaps based on the peculiarities of the environment.
Nationally common challenges including teacher truancy, poor learning materials, inadequate lesson notes and instructional materials as well as outdated classroom management methods were identified as issues requiring reform.
All of these were addressed on a case-by-case basis using requisite technology and the global best practice in basic education.
With the implementation of BayelsaPRIME, no longer do teachers fake attendance as they have to be physically present in school to mark attendance using their tablets.
No longer can teachers refuse to participate or refuse to teach in class since their lesson completion rates are monitored remotely using modern telephony.
No longer do teachers go into class with substandard lesson notes since they are equipped with tested and proven lesson guides that they can study and internalize to deliver impactful lessons.
No longer are schools left to run without key performance indicators which they aim to achieve.
In Bayelsa, technology is making it possible to predict the performance of teachers, schools and children.
UNESCO is clear about the role that literacy plays in building more inclusive, peaceful, just, and sustainable societies.
It notes that “Literacy is central to the creation of such societies, while progress in other areas of development contributes to generating interest and motivation of people to acquire, use, and further develop their literacy and numeracy skills.”
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