Global media giant, The Economist, has recognised EdoBEST as a working model for basic education service delivery.
In a 1,768-word feature article titled “Most children in poor countries are being failed by their schools,” the business newspaper opined that “the depth of its scripting and the whizziness of its tablets set the work in Edo apart from many other attempts to improve schooling,” while referring to EdoBEST.
Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State launched the EdoBEST reform programme in 2018 to address the challenge of poor learning outcomes and youth unemployability which were the root causes of illegal migration and people trafficking in the state.
Since inception, the government has upskilled 16,400 teachers and provided them with tablets to deliver more impactful lessons using a completely new method, the EdoBEST pedagogy. More than 350,000 children, most of them in primary schools in urban and rural areas, are benefitting from the programme.
Since the introduction of EdoBEST, pupils throughout the state receive identical lessons in real-time. They are taught using a methodology used by Bridge Schools in Kenya; a method described by Nobel Prize in Economics Winner, Professor Michael Kremer, as delivering exceptional learning outcomes when compared to traditional methods.
“These include techniques such as pausing frequently to pose questions to the class, instead of delivering long lectures at the blackboard, or encouraging pupils to try to solve a problem by chatting to the child sitting next to them,” according to The Economist.
The feature is based on evidence from a 3-day visit to a junior secondary school and two primary schools, one, a progressive school in a remote village in Edo State.
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