While students in civilized nations have continued to learn under lockdown, most Nigerian students are sitting home doing nothing.
Yesterday, I had a long conversation with the director of Catholic Education in Owerri Archdiocese, Rev. Fr. Bertrand Ujunwa and I could hear a leader deeply worried about this situation. We explored several options to get his students back to school. I could not sleep last night worrying about this and this morning I decided to throw this idea out there.
May be the education authorities in Nigeria should consider tele school especially for primary and secondary school kids. Since the curricula for these categories of students in Nigeria are the same nationwide, Nigeria can dedicate some television channels to tele schooling. For example, NTA can decide to bring in a math teacher to teach SS1 math at 9am daily. At this time, all SS1 math students in Nigeria can tune in to the channel. After the class, the tele teacher can give home work. The students can submit their homeworks to their specific math teachers via email or WhatsApp and receive feedback.
Regional schools with over 90% of their students living in the region should consider setting up campus television stations with limited coverage. These TV stations can have channels dedicated to different subjects at different times. Nigerian universities should consider campus televisions dedicated to tele school. Teachers and lecturers can come to the studio to deliver lectures while students learn from home.
Teleschool can be helpful in Nigeria where internet connectivity is still weak and not widespread. Besides, the cost of data is still very high in Nigeria, and many Nigerian students cannot afford reliable cellphones, tablets and laptops to stream online classes. But there is hardly any household in Nigeria that does not have a television and the state television stations are usually subscription free.
This is just an initial thought. Our communication and IT guys can look at this very closely to determine its feasibility, but I know this is already working in countries like Pakistan.
Godswill Agbagwa
Founder, www.csaaeinc.org
