Bridge International is Poised to Help Nigerian Students Recover

Unfortunately, 2020 was not a great year for Nigeria’s school children. Figures released by the Ministry of Education in March 2021 state that the number of children not attending school totalled 10.1 million. This is an increase of over 3 million from the year previous.

While the numbers were issued without comment being passed as to potential reasons as to why the increase, it’s clear that the Coronavirus pandemic is at least partially to blame. The Nigerian Union of Teachers also points to kidnap attacks in the northern part of the country, which have led many schools to close their doors for the meantime. It’s estimated 700 children have been kidnapped from schools in Zamfara, Katsina, Jigawa, Niger and Kaduna states in the first quarter of 2021. Across Nigeria as a whole, just over half of the school children have been engaged in learning since the lockdowns started in March 2020.

Bridge International Academies may well be in a good place to help Nigerian kids rebuild as Covid 19 cases have been steadily falling since the highs of January and February 2021. While we may not see another month like June – where two days had zero new cases recorded – Nigeria is now recording around half the cases of August’s infection spike, so there is cause for hope. To counter this issue, Bridge International Academies have put together excellent remote learning packages that enable children to learn whether they can be in the school building or not.

Operating in Nigerian, Kenya, Liberia, Uganda, India (Andhra Pradesh state) and with physical schools in Osun, Borno, Edo and Lagos, Bridge International Academies are creating solutions for remote learning where technology at home may be limited. For example the Bridge@Home package includes free WhatsApp quizzes and tests, which need no more than a mobile phone using minimal 2G data to access and complete. Should Nigeria go into lockdown again in the future, schemes like this will be invaluable. Bridge International Academies teach the national curriculum of each country they operate in, so children are well prepared for the exam they have to sit. Bridge students outperformed the national merit rate by 37% in Nigeria. This is the third consecutive year Bridge students have gained exceptional scores.

Bridge International Academies’ educational efforts aren’t just limited to their own schools. Since 2018 in Edo, they’ve been partnering with the state government in the EdoBEST program, which will upskill over 15,000 government teachers and benefit over 300,000 children. Bridge Nigeria Managing Director OladapoOlarinmoye noted that “the initial analysis of boys and girls suggests that being in an EdoBEST school equates to nearly three-quarters of a year more math instruction and nearly two-thirds of a year more literacy instruction compared to a traditional Edo primary school”.

Bridge schools have a model of direct learning, where educators teach the curriculum from e-readers, read from a tablet and the efficiency of the program means that teachers can be onboarded quicker, and experts in their curriculum very quickly. Instead of having children learn by rote, lessons are structured with problems being broken down into manageable steps, allowing teachers to pinpoint exactly where a pupil is making a mistake. This scaffolding of schoolwork encourages a positive feedback loop between teachers and children – there’s a big difference between a child thinking ‘I made a mistake on this part’ rather than ‘I can’t do this’.

Lessons are frame worked on ‘I do, you do, we do’, and giving a solid structure allows teachers space to bring their own creativity and imagination into individual class lessons – and encourages children to also. In addition, co-curricular classes such as arts and crafts, sport and music are conducted wherever facilities permit. Thus far, the results seem to speak for themselves. And Tribune Online will be watching as the organization continues to do great work across the world.