‘Digital Infrastructure, Others Critical To Achieving Resilient Education System’

Stakeholders in the education sector in Nigeria have harped on the need for more investment in capacity training for teachers, formulation of digital learning policy, and provision of digital infrastructure in order to build a resilient educational system that could help mitigate learning losses occasioned by COVID-19 pandemic or any other disruptions.

This was the takeout from the virtual roundtable for the June edition of Edtech Monday moderated by a social engineering practitioner, Joyce Daniel, which featured panelists such as the Chief Executive Officer, Solve Education, Oladimeji Ojo, Education Manager, UNICEF Nigeria, Rudra Sahoo, and Human focused learning designer, Henry Ogundolire.

Sahoo, who spoke at the roundtable with the theme ‘Harnessing the Power of Technology to create resilient education system,’ noted that the intervention of UNICEF in Nigeria’s educational system through technology has contributed greatly to reducing learning losses caused by the COVID-19 hit.

He stated that the organization had launched Nigeria learning passport – a learning management system for school children in both primary and secondary schools to support FG and state governments at a time when many of them could not access learning due to school closure.

The UNICEF Education Officer, who specializes in monitoring the process of learning and psychometric analysis with a focus on improving children’s learning outcomes, disclosed that UNICEF had trained about 59,000 teachers with ICT capacity skills to enable them to integrate the best technology in the classroom.

Also speaking, Ojo noted that despite the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, his organization did encourage learning by providing incentives for learners adding that beyond technology, motivation, proper mindset, capacity training, and the right infrastructure are key to building resilience in the education system in order to prevent learning losses in the event of any COVID-19 disruption.

Ogundolire, on his part, stated that there are different roles technology can play in ensuring that learning losses are mitigated amid any disruption, provided stakeholders understand what the focus of learning is all about.