Bayelsa Education Reform Programme For Exhibition In UK

The teaching and learning methodology that drives BayelsaPRIME, the basic education reform programme of Bayelsa State government, is up for exhibition as the 2024 Education World Forum commences in London, United Kingdom, on Sunday, May 19, 2024.

An annual event, Education World Forum is the world’s largest gathering of education and skills ministers. This year, an estimated 120 ministers drawn from 114 countries will focus on the theme ‘Encouraging AI understanding, building human relationships and resilience, and accelerating climate action. How should we prioritise policy and implementation for Stronger, Bolder, Better Education?’

Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State launched BayelsaPRIME to increase pupil enrollment, address challenges with a weak curriculum, teacher truancy and poor learning outcomes in government primary schools.

In 2022, a study conducted by Nobel Prize in Economics winner, Professor Michael Kremer, in Kenya showed that, attending schools delivering highly standardised education has the potential to produce dramatic learning gains at scale, suggesting that policymakers may wish to explore the incorporation of standardisation, including standardised lesson plans and teacher feedback and monitoring, in their own systems.

For early childhood development students using the methodology, the gains were even bigger. Students supported by the methodology gained almost an additional year and half of learning (1.48), learning in two years what students in other schools learn in three and a half years.

Now in its second year, BayelsaPRIME is drastically improving teaching and learning by introducing technology, teacher professional development, child protection, paying attention to every child and incorporating analytics in decision-making.