Parents and guardians in Edo State public primary schools have backed the Promotion and Retention intervention policy of Edo State Universal Basic Education Board (Edo SUBEB) describing it as a strategy that will ultimately improve literacy and numeracy skills among pupils.
The parents asserted their support at the recently held Parent Teacher Conference organised by Edo SUBEB and held in 1289 schools as part of the EdoBEST reform programme.
The promotion and retention policy was reintroduced by Edo SUBEB to improve literacy, numeracy and other transferable skills among pupils in state-owned primary schools. It is geared at improving the skills of pupils who do not attain the required scores or meet the criteria for promotion to the next class after completing a year of learning.
A structured intervention plan to ensure that such pupils receive extra help from teachers trained specifically for that purpose has been developed and will be activated at the start of the 2023/2024 academic session.
Andy Johnson, the parent of a Primary four pupil in FSP Primary School Benin City noted that he is confident that this new policy will greatly improve performance. “I am happy about the new system as children will be more challenged to prove their abilities. It is applaudable and I commend those saddled with the responsibility of carrying this out,” he noted.
Mrs Patience Aghama, the assistant Headteacher at Asoro Primary School noted that there was an improvement in performance with the announcement of the promotion and retention plan. “This past term, the children performed better than before and we saw increased participation from parents and guardians. We see children being motivated by their parents to come to school every day and learn”.
“I would like parents to also use the EdoBEST@Home platform in keeping children engaged. This will also allow parents to be more involved in their children’s studies and with this, we will see improvements in the coming term”, she said.
Edo SUBEB has assured parents that children will be kept engaged with the online learning platform, EdoBEST@Home over the holidays. Osasumwen Erhabor, a teacher at FSP Primary School noted that the online classes will be active over the holidays to ensure children are learning.
Stakeholders at the Parent Teacher Conference commended Edo SUBEB for putting the termly event together. They expressed their satisfaction with the opportunity which enables them to track the performance of their children. “Her teacher explained her performance, identified areas of improvement, and gave tips on what we can do during the holidays. It is a good thing for us as parents to have this opportunity to discuss ways for improvement,” Benjamin Nyamunor, a parent said.
EdoBEST is a basic education reform of the Governor Godwin Obaseki-led administration through which technology-enabled techniques have been used to improve learning outcomes across primary schools in the state.
Since implementation, it has introduced measures to further improve learning outcomes. The parent-teacher conference, promotion and retention policy, as well as cross-grade ability grouping, are some of the policies that were introduced under EdoBEST.
The conference which helps build positive relationships between parents, teachers, pupils and school leaders had over 80,000 parents in attendance across the 18 LGAs in Edo state.
