Published By Olukayode Idowu
The Government of Nigeria, UNICEF and other partners have launched on Thursday the Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP), an online mobile platform.
The platform which would soon include offline option is aimed at providing continuous education to three million learners in 2022 alone, and a total of 12 million by 2025.
“To ensure continuity of learning for all children and the resilience of education systems to future shocks, we must change and reimagine the education sector,”
Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, who was represented by the Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba said: “Deploying innovations that rethink the current methodologies, including new approaches to delivering education in ways that defy the digital divide, and ensuring learning continuity in emergencies, has become imperative.”
The Nigerian Learning Passport, according to a statement, is designed for pre-primary, primary and secondary school learning. Children, youth, and teachers can access a digitalized curriculum providing learning materials in all core curriculum subjects for Primary One to Six, and all Junior and Senior Secondary School classes.
A learner can register on the platform using any device with a web browser, or through the NLP mobile application, to access a variety of high-quality learning content.
With the launch, Nigeria has joined 20 other countries in the world where the Learning Passport is reaching children with improved learning opportunities.
UNICEF’s Executive Director, Catherine Russell, in a goodwill message at the launch in Abuja, said: “Before COVID-19, about 10.5 million Nigerian children aged between 5 and 14 were not in school. Today in Nigeria, more than 9.7 million children are at risk of never returning to school, their learning left behind. The Learning Passport can help change that,” adding that: “By offering simple, easy, and fun ways to learn, as well as tailor-made training programmes, the Learning Passport will help respond to the needs of every child. With online, offline, and mobile options, it can help us reach the most vulnerable and marginalized learners.”
Nigeria’s education sector faces many challenges that have contributed to keeping more than 10.5 million children out of school in Africa’s most populous nation.
One of these challenges is access to quality learning, exacerbated in recent times by attacks on learning institutions and abduction of students. Both have made parents fearful of sending their children to school. The disruption to education by school attacks has meant millions of children have significantly missed out on learning they would have acquired if they had been in the classroom.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the digital divide two-thirds of the world’s children face, having no access to internet in their homes. This lack of connectivity affects low-income countries and rural regions in greater proportions and puts children and youth in these areas at greater risk of missing out on education, perpetuating inequalities.
Also speaking, UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Peter Hawkins, noted that both the digital divide and COVID-19 have shown us that we must innovate to help Nigerian children fulfil their right to an education.
He added that: “We appreciate the partnership with Microsoft, the Global Partnership for Education, and all partners who collaborated with the Federal Ministry of Education on this project to provide continuous learning access to children in Nigeria.”
The NLP is supported by GenU 9JA (Generation Unlimited in Nigeria), with the aim of delivering connectivity and digital learning to young Nigerians at scale. Partners such as IHS Towers and Airtel are currently connecting schools to the internet and providing zero-rated data to ensure that UNICEF can deploy the NLP in connected schools and reach millions of children with digital learning.
GenU 9JA has an ambitious objective to support 20 million young Nigerians (aged 10 to 24) to transition from learning to earning and delivering data, digital learning, job-related skills, and livelihood opportunities by 2030.
