Eight private primary and secondary schools have been honoured with the British Council International School Award (ISA) at a colourful event at the Eko Hotel and Suites, Victorial Island, Lagos.
They were adjudged to have met the stipulated benchmark in international education delivery, collaborated with schools in other countries, exposed their pupils to core skills relevant to the 21st century as well as cultural education of other countries; and embarked on projects that impacted communities around them.
Six of the schools are in Lagos, while the other two are in Abuja and Ogun State.
The schools in Lagos are: Child of Promise School, Lekki; Hallmark School, Ikeja, Lagos; Linsy High School, Lekki; Linsy Nursery and Primary School, Lekki; M.D. School, Ikeja; and Supreme Education Foundation School; Magodo.
Others are: Olumawu School, Wuse, Abuja; and Riverside Montessori School, Isheri in Ogun State.
British Council’s Director of Programmes Louisa Waddingham, said the number of recipients doubled this year as four schools had won yearly in the past three years.
She said the nine stages the schools passed through to get the award really challenged them to change how they run their schools and incorporate measures that would make them globally comparable.
“The schools have to go through nine stages; and each stage is quite stretching for them. It means they have to introduce new things to the school – new ways of working, teaching, new ways of actually running their whole school that makes it an international global citizenship school. It’s quite demanding; but it does means they come out of it more equipped to cope with life’s challenges; new events that will come up…This makes schools to be ready to adapt and how to make changes to things that happen,” she said.
Ms Waddingham praised the efforts the schools put into the whole process that spanned over one year.
“These awards enable us to really value and show appreciation to the schools as they make progress towards inculcating internationalism into their schools and their behaviours, and the way they run and how they teach the students. The ISA award really recognises how schools develop their young people to be global citizens so they can think globally and act locally. And what we’ve had today is about a lot of really strong community projects that the students have done and also what they’ve learnt about other cultures. And if they can do community projects and think about their local environment, and think about the world at large as well, they can develop to become more responsible, active, peaceful global citizens. And that is good for all of us,” he said.
Speaking about the impact of the award on her school, Mrs Omolara Adedugbe, proprietor, M.D. School, said it had helped the school grow.
“A lot of times we had to do projects, we had to do research; we had to reach out to communities were we are based. And also, we had this Connecting Classroom project with our partner schools in the UK, Bangladesh and in India. So these were activities we did over one year.
“Before then, we already had partner schools in the U.K. and other places. With this ISA award project, we were much more exposed, not only to schools in the UK. So children are able to understand how other children learn; their environment; they were able to exchange knowledge – asking questions from both ends. It creates what you call global citizenship in the children,” she said.
Another recipient, Toluwalope Oyedepo of Olumawu Schools, Abuja, said the school really learnt what it meant to collaborate.
“One of the things British Council teaches us is collaboration. And really, I realised this is not the kind of project you can just sit down and formulate. You know Nigerians like to formulate things a lot. But this particular project requires you really doing the job and getting all your students involved – even at some point, their parents and partner schools, both within and outside Nigeria. It is a project that really brought people together, the main essence of collaboration. And for all the hard work, the reward really pays,” she said.
