QUALITY education nurtures the mind and expands scope of opportunities for the educated but it is unaffordable for the less privileged, especially in rural areas.
To close the gaps in opportunities for the indigent, Bridge International Academies berthed in Nigeria last week with the inauguration of two schools in two suburbs of Lagos State – Ijegun in Alimosho Local Government Area (LGA) and Igbogbo in Ikorodu.
Its mission is to enroll indigent children to enjoy quality private education at a subsidised cost of N6,000.
Co-founded by Jay Kimmelman and Ms Shannon May, Bridge International Academies is a group of schools established with the aim of giving over 400,000 children living in rural areas a world-class education as their peers in exclusive private schools.
The inauguration of the schools in Ijegun and Ikorodu witnessed a large turnout of residents, who brought their children for enrollment at the schools.
At the ceremony in Ijegun, the presence of ace comedian and actor, Hafiz Oyetoro, popularly known as Saka, drew crowd to the event, which had Director-General of the Office of Education Quality Assurance, Lagos Ministry of Education, Mrs Ronke Soyombo, and Chief Executive Officer of TW Magazine, Mrs Adesuwa Oyenokwe, in attendance.
Other guests included chairperson of Nigeria Field Society, Robin Campbell, her husband, Hugh, Divisional CEO of Interswitch Financial Inclusion Services, Mr Mike Ogbalu, and representative of DEEPEN, Mr Adeyemi Adebayo, among others.
Having successfully run the Academies for six years in Mukuru slum in Kenya, Ms May said there was the need to expand the opportunity to other parts of Africa and Asia.
By 2025, she said, the schools would have trained 10 million children in several developing countries.
Ms May said the schools would leverage on technology and economic realities to dispense quality knowledge at subsidised rate.
May said: “The compelling case for this was the fact that, all over the world, poor children are likely to always under-perform their peers from affluent families, not because they are less intelligent, but because they are unable to access quality education.
“We are in Kenya and Uganda to partner communities and government on this project. It surprised many people that the pupils we worked with were able to learn fast. We believe that the pedagogy approach to teachers’ training and the way we schedule the classes and how the teachers engage the children in activity-based learning can really help develop the children.”
She said the success of the Academies in Kenya in 2009 led to the establishment of additional 412 pre-nursery and primary schools in different part of the country for the benefit of low-income families and wished the same to happen in Nigeria.
Director-General of the Office of Education Quality Assurance, Mrs Ronke Soyombo said the Lagos State Ministry of Education was ready to partner with the founders of the Academies to make education affordable and accessible in education-disadvantaged areas of the state.
The DG, who observed that an approval was given for the establishment of the Academies after assessment, said the ministry had reviewed the evaluation schedule to enable private and public schools to maintain the standard set by the government.
Mrs Soyombo said: “We will not condone any teaching and learning that is not up to the standard set by the government. We have upgraded curriculum for the benefit of the pupils. We want care and guidance to be ingrained in our evaluation schedule, because we want to ensure every child is monitored and properly guided by the teacher.”
Saka urged the parents not to jeopardise the future of their wards by keeping them at home, telling a story of how her father suspended construction work on his first house to pay his fees when he gained admission into university.
She said: “Education is not money; but it is a key that will unlock opportunities, including money and every other thing we desire. I came from a poor background. Because my parents struggled to send me to school, I can now have handshake with presidents and highly-placed people, who I think I could not have met. You parents must not allow your financial challenges to keep your children away from school.”
The highpoint was the inauguration of the school building, which is located on Ibrahim Iyiola Street in Isheri Osun. The event also featured cultural display by the pupils and scholarship raffle draw, which had a Primary 2 pupil, Zikrullah Ambali, winning a year scholarship.
