Lagos State Government has stressed that quality education is also crucial to the state’s progress and growth in the 21st century.
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Executive Chairman, Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board’s, LASUBEB, Wahab Alawiye-King, made the remarks at the commemoration of year 2022 International Day of Education, themed: ‘Changing Course, Transforming Educatio,” held in Ikeja.
Alawiye-King, therefore, promised not to relent in its efforts towards improving primary education in the state.
The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed January 24 as International Day of Education in 2018 in celebration of the role of education for peace and development while Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu launched EKOEXCEL in 2019 to provide quality education and up-skill teachers leveraging technology.
Commenting on this year’s celebration and EKOEXCEL’s strides, Alawiye-King said good education is the foundation for the better future the present administration wants for all Lagos state pupils.
According to him, “quality education is also crucial to the state’s progress and growth in the 21st century and government is sparing no efforts to develop the sector.”
While, highlighting the achievements of EKOEXCEL in just two years of existence, he said it would not relent in up-scaling the skills of teachers and improving pupils’ learning environment.
“The recently released EKOEXCEL 2020-2021 Endline Fluency and Numeracy Evaluation that showed EKOEXCEL pupils are making remarkable progress in oral reading fluency and foundational numeracy compared to their performance before the initiative’s commencement, is a challenge to us to up our game and we shall do just that so that by the next evaluation, we will have more progress to report”, Alawiye-King said.
Also commenting, Permanent Board Member of LASUBEB and oversight chair of the EKOEXCEL programme, Adebayo Adefuye, disclosed that the initiative has big ambitions this year, with the total transformation of basic education the overarching goal.
According to him; “Just like the theme of this year’s International Day of Education ‘Changing Course, Transforming Education’, we at EKOEXCEL won’t relent until we completely change the course of public education in Lagos for the better. A total transformation of public primary education is our goal and we are happy we are on course”, Adefuye said.
“The recent report on EKOEXCEL 2020-2021 Endline Fluency and Numeracy Evaluation showed how the intervention is improving pupils of public schools and transforming the education sector.
“It showed that on average, EKOEXCEL Primary 2-3 pupils are outperforming 13 other country contexts on the International Common Assessment of Numeracy (ICAN) while Primary 4-6 ranked third out of 14 country contexts on the same numeracy assessment.
“The evaluation also affirmed that EKOEXCEL is both improving learning over what existed before and is itself continuing to improve learning.To further consolidate the intervention’s achievements while striving for more academic excellence, Adefuye stated.
He continued: “EKOEXCEL has commenced a robust public awareness campaign which include driving enrolment and reducing the number of out of school children in alignment with the government’s ‘Leave No Child Behind Policy’ and boosting academic excellence from a foundational level in Lagos public schools.
“The others include engaging parents and communities on the need and importance of education and connecting citizens to the government’s economic growth agenda through the transformation of education. “
