Building Resilient Education System In A Thousand Words

I was a panellist in the Mastercard Foundation EdTech Monday Show for June 2022. We spoke on Harnessing the Power of Technology To Create Resilient Education Systems.

By definition, resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. In essence, resilience is the ability of the Nigerian education system to recover from current and future events like COVID 19.

Key takeaway: To build a resilient education system that would mitigate against the impact of future outbreaks like Covid19, Nigeria must address its Soft and Hard Infrastructure issues.

Soft infrastructure: Learning Motivation; Teacher Training; Policies; Financing Education

Learning Motivation:?

If students were never self-motivated to learn but compelled, events like Covid 19 would only exacerbate their learning outcomes. Leaning motivation is a huge problem that we are solving at Solve Education! (we are answering the question of how to motivate youths to learn the skills they need to lead a meaningful life). Students can only truly benefit from education when encouraged to acquire specific knowledge that would spur them. The repercussion of forced learning (which isn't always bad) is that students learn to pass and forget. The apparent metric of learning motivation is what students were able to make of the information that they have acquired.?

Education systems become more resilient when students are motivated to learn and have the right mindset.

Teacher-training:?

Teachers are facilitators of learning and are critical stakeholders in national development. If we don't equip teachers with the up-to-date skillset, information and mindset, then we should have low expectations of their students.

You can't holistically teach to detail what you don't know.

However, there are student outliers who went against the odds to succeed, irrespective of the archaic teaching methods with which they were educated (Nigerians can relate). These students have had to do extra hard work to achieve their goals.

Teachers are a critical part of the foundation of a resilient education system. Neglecting teachers?

Policies:?

It is always of enormous benefit to any nation when policies that nudge stakeholders to improve themselves continuously are put into place. I mean policies that give no room to mediocrity. Policies that will keep stakeholders (teachers, parents, public and private sectors, and students) on their toes as excellence becomes incentivized.

Financing Education:?

Nigeria allocated 4.30% to education, less than 5.68% in 2021. It's no news that the 2021 budget was poorer than 2016, meaning Nigeria doesn't rate education. A nation would never outgrow the education of its people. It's telling when the government chooses to disregard education. It leaves individuals who had the means to seek better education for themselves and those who have no means to remain in the trenches.

Meanwhile, education should be an equalizer. When more funding goes into education, we will be equipping teachers with the necessary resources. Students will get a quality education, and institutions will succeed. Private and public entities will build infrastructure, which will create more jobs, and parents will have the income to pay school fees.

Nigeria's Federal Government budget for education between 2016 and 2022. Source: ICIR, Nigeria. Accessed June 2022. Link here

Hard Infrastructure: Inclusion (Internet Accessibility and Affordability); Power

Hard infrastructure drives inclusion. To build a resilient educational system, we must include the masses. I will major in Internet accessibility and affordability, but it is not limited to it.

Internet Affordability:?

This section should cover the affordability of the internet and how accessible it should be. My co-panellist, Rudra Sahoo (UNICEF Nigeria) mentioned how the internet is so expensive in Nigeria compared to India. Internet is at least 10x more expensive. Given inflation and current circumstances, our people are becoming poorer. They may struggle to purchase internet data. Remote learning is almost impossible for people who have internet access but can't purchase data because they do not have the means. Although we built our learning app, Dawn of Civilization , to work offline, students need to connect to the internet once a week to upload their learning process to the cloud. There's still the need for affordability. Their learning process becomes harder to measure when students can't upload their progress.?

In building a resilient educational system, we must work on internet affordability. If another Covid hits, will our education system withstand it?

Internet Accessibility:?

Inclusion is impossible without access. While accessibility is linked to affordability, there's the "reach factor." If your area only has Edge bandwidth or GPRS, you can't compare with regions without a network signal. A student on GPRS will cover less than one on 4G band would. If another Covid hits, internet accessibility means that people no longer need to remain in the flagged zones because there is no network in the green zones.

Speaking on the impact of internet accessibility and affordability on business and economy. Tayo Oviosu (Paga CEO) tweeted three things he would love to see from Nigeria's next president. Top on his list was, "Crashing internet price to India level at $0.07 per GB - by force."

Businesses will blossom, and innovation will become extremely pronounced when the internet is accessible and affordable. It will drive up digital inclusion. More investment monies will flow into Nigeria, and businesses will create more jobs.

Power:?

Another unseen force Nigeria is battling is Power. It is so multi-faceted that once you start to complain, you conclude by leaving it in God's hands. To put it into perspective, presently, seventy-six million Nigerians or 40.7% of the Nigerian population (more than twice the population of Canada), are not connected to the national power grid. For those connected, Power supply is a severe problem as approximately 90% of total Power demanded is not supplied. Source: CSEA Africa , Accessed June 2022.

Even if the internet becomes affordable and accessible, we will not attain resilience without solving for Power. All hands must be on deck to solve this problem.

In closing:

Inculcating hybrid classrooms and hybrid teaching pedagogies, so remote learning doesn't take stakeholders by surprise, should be how we respond to recent events that have disrupted education and learning outcomes. However, we must put in place hard and soft infrastructure if we will be resilient.

I wrote the above piece while regurgitating on the panel session. Thanks for hosting us, Joyce Daniels :) Thanks for your contributions, Dr Henry Ogundolire .

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