The Edo State Government has said that it undertook massive infrastructural facelift in schools across the state to ensure a conducive learning environment for students under the Edo Basic Education Sector Transformation (EdoBEST) programme.
Executive Chairperson of the Edo State Universal Basic Education Board (EdoSUBEB), Dr. Joan Osa Oviawe, disclosed this in a chat with journalists.
According to her, “The shift in classroom culture has been bolstered by improvements in infrastructure. Significantly, more pupils now have schools that are more conducive for learning.
“Across the state, 9,632 classrooms have been renovated, 204 classrooms have been constructed while 37,629 pupil desks and chairs have been distributed and 32 fences have been constructed.”
She noted that as part of the infrastructure improvement plans, the state has also created 95 water sources, 1110 toilets, 112, 152, 43 square meters roofing, 105, 725 square meters of floor tiles and playgrounds.
“Schools have also been equipped with over 11 million instructional materials including exams, textbooks, posters, homework books, flashcards and supplementary literacy materials,” she added.
She noted that the board introduced the EdoBEST@Home programme in the wake of the coronavirus disease outbreak, adding that it is a child-centered, scientific approach, which leverages the SUBEB website and virtual learning classrooms via WhatsApp.
Recall that Governor Godwin Obaseki had on June 28, 2021 expanded EdoBEST programme to capture secondary schools and tertiary institutions in the state to allow them benefit from the gains in digital teaching recorded in primary schools through the programme, which was inaugurated in 2018.
“We have made progress; we are not where we want to be yet but we need to accelerate. Our kids are now learning better; their level is about 70 percent of their colleagues in Europe and Asia. They are far from where their colleagues in Nigeria are; that’s not the standard.
“We want to be at 100 percent; We want to extend this education transformation throughout the educational chain; basic education system, middle school, technical colleges and tertiary institutions,” Obaseki noted during the launch of EdoBEST 2.0.
