Week 2 – Does the Edtech sector offer a valid diagnosis of what is wrong with education?
The Edtech sector intervention in the education system is such a great assistance to the education system and also yielding great results, but as fantastic as the Edtech sector intervention is, it has not offer a valid diagnosis of what is wrong with education especially in my country Nigeria.
I will like to take this discussion from my country point of view which is Nigeria, we have many Edtech companies such as the ulesson, gradely,edukoya etc on ground and more are springing up, all thanks to COVID which opened my people’s eyes to the fact that it is possible for you to go to school for a whole term, write external examination and pass without seeing the four corners of a school – schooling is possible without physically attending a school.
The Edtech sector belive that education is broken in terms of what people are learning that it is not what actually we should be learning now, that we should be smarter as in digital wise since the world is changing, we should all upgrade to be able to match up with the global trend, they also focus on instructional delivery problems and problems associated with them, that is students being able to study at their own pace, be it a fast or slow learner, whichever the child is, some of those apps too has an interface in which parents or guardian can use to monitor their children study progress, even the child location can also be monitored because some have installed GPS.
But sadly the problem with education system in Nigeria is much more higher than the reach of the Edtech sector diagnosis for now, I totally agree with the fact that education is broken and we need to upgrade, advance , move higher or faster as the case may be, but to me,there are some problems in the Nigeria education system that should be urgently diagnosed and fixed which is in no way related to technology.
I would like to highlight them.
Inadequate Budget Allocation:
In the 2024 budget presented by our president, Sen. Bola Tinubu,education was found to be 6.39 percent which was far below the 15 percent recommended by UNESCO, this to me is a big problem because a developing country like mine needs even more than that 15 percent but now even the 15 percent is not available, this will lead to so many backwardness in the education system,especially those children that attend public schools, which is much more larger than those that attends private school, for instance in Lagos state we have six educational districts, I belong to district 1, and in district 1 alone we have 100 public secondary schools with an average of about 160,000 students,that is just one district excluding public primary and public higher institutions, this will lead to poorly funded education and this will in turn limit the space in which Edtech can thrive in the country, the devices for edtech does not come cheap and this inadequacy will make the public students suffer for it.
Poverty Level
Due to the rising inflation in Nigeria the poverty level is high and the little money people have is used for feeding rather than for buying gadgets, I have a personal experience about this I teach in a public school, in 2020 I enrolled my students for technovation for girls competition, it’s an international competition but based in the United States, but sadly as we were preparing our entry the lockdown set in and we couldn’t meet physically so the only option for us is to meet online,to my greatest shock out of the five girls selected for this competition (these girls are among the best academically in my school) only one of them have a parent that use android phone, the rest of them don’t have a parent that have a phone that we can use to meet online, they only have the small phones for calling alone, and so they have to look for one of their neighbours with android phone in which I will send a WhatsApp video to, they will see it and in turn do what I want them to do, it was so hectic submitting our entry for the competition. This is the plight of some of the students we teach, although it might be a different in the private school but what is the ratio of the students in private school to a public school, the gap is really wide, how will a child without device access education technology,some schools were even lucky, the government bought few devices for them, which is not up to one tenth of the number of students, but among those that collected there were reports of some of them selling it for a small amount of money, they prioritise the money than what they can gain from the device, that’s a big signal of poverty mentality.
The Ministry of Education Mentality
Theseare the people in charge big setting curriculum and other things needed in school, I think they need real orientation on the advantage of edtech, a quality assurance once came to my school and was asking for lesson note it took one of my colleague a great deal of time before he could convince that it is on his tab, even after showing him he was still insisting he should have written it out.
Justlike Mr Euan Blair noted in his interview when he was discussing some of the pitfalls of university education, he noted that the labour market is shifting,we should be working smarter , I appreciate what he said when he said he is not anti university but the university or school or curriculum or scheme as it may apply should give what is relevant to this dynamic world we live in now, so my country ministry of education needs to work smarter.
Politics
Politics is also one big problem in Nigeria Education system , lack of continuity in governance immediately another government take over power, in my school we have a comprehensive school – Dairy Farm comprehensive school, so I teach both in the regular and the comprehensive school, but the comprehensive school is currently facing a big challenge, it is even at the risk of being faced off, a committee is been set up that will determine the fate of the school, but personally I see the problem as a human problem because the comprehensive school was set up by the former commissioner of education and when the new commissioner got there,he found so many faults in the program, it was not well attended to and the students there which are always at the receiving end are made to pay for the wrongs because we have to move the final year to the regular school which originally is not the plan.
Honestly some of our politicians are worse than wingard that encourage the strike action in order to bring in some Edtech companies, some of this politicians for personal gain even engaged in projects they know has no sustainability and they want only their own will to be done rather than the interest of the people
Conclusion
I believe the Edtech sector diagnosis of the education system but for my country it is not totally valid, in the word’s of Melissa in her book review ” There’s a lot of talk of the need for a “system rethink” but fewer concrete solutions” I am of the opinion that a valid diagnosis will include the government , parents, teachers even the students to properly diagnose and then fix what is wrong with the education system in Nigeria, all hands must be on deck to be able to make a great change and upgrade to the global standard.
Some students themselves are not interested in education they would rather get involved in social vices such as defrauding people online which is foundly called Yahoo in my country ,this also is a big threat to education,it is worthy of note too that not all students can learn using the app , some still prefer the physical method seeing the teacher physically, even discussing some issues that are not academic with the teacher ,has helped some students to learn better.
Reference
Jason Wingard’s edtech Griftopia by Matt seybold
Melissa Ben review of inadequate by priya Lakhani
2024 Budget: Tinubu’s improved funding for education still below UNESCO recommendation
Hello there Olubukola,
Good work on this post. I can see some improvement from last week to this week which is exactly the kind of progress we are looking for. Each week, the argument should get a little sharper, a little more refined, and draw on more and more of the literature to do so. So you are on the right path here. Keep up the good work.
First off, I am glad that you related the question being asked specifically to the Nigerian educational sector. That is what we want you to do whenever possible (some of the prompts will be asking for broader reflections than just Nigeria, but most can be tailored specifically to the challenges of the Nigerian educational system). I also see that you answered the question upfront and with conviction. That is good. We are looking for strong critical voices here and I can see your voice emerging nicely. A good model for subsequent posts.
I take this as your overall position on the question: ‘But sadly the problem with education system in Nigeria is much more higher than the reach of the Edtech sector diagnosis for now, I totally agree with the fact that education is broken and we need to upgrade, advance , move higher or faster as the case may be, but to me,there are some problems in the Nigeria education system that should be urgently diagnosed and fixed which is in no way related to technology.’
Agreed, and this is ultimately the issue with discussions of educational technology. The edtech often acts as a proxy for broader concerns: inequalities, funding shortfalls, equity, access, poverty, and so forth. Technology will often exacerbate current problems such as this, if not properly imagined in the educational sector. The fact that you recognise that edtech cannot ‘fix’ this issue, even that edtech has nothing to do with the underlying problems, is good insight.
The example you mention in the Politics section is instructive as well as the lack of political continuity is often at the root of educational initiatives (technological or otherwise) that start and stop without any systems change. I encourage you to further explore this in subsequent posts as it is a problem that affects many countries (and clearly Nigerias as well). Unfortunately corruption is as well, particularly concerning edtech. We will see a bit of this in the main reading for Week 3 and its discussion on an initiative (Bridge International Academy) that had the backing and political clout of many high profile organisations. I look forward to seeing your take on that in the blog next week!
So the focus of what you are writing about is right where it should be. Now let’s think about the technical aspects of its execution. I would like you to begin pulling directly from the readings in your posts, drawing attention to specific passages or quotes whenever possible and adding inline citations as you do (Author, Year). So I hope to see that in the posts going forward, especially for next week as you can and should be drawing directly from the Riep article to support your writing.
It is good to get in the habit as well of providing the reference list at the end as well, formatted in the appropriate style. We use Harvard referencing system on the course and this resource should help: https://www.citethemrightonline.com/category-list?docid=CTRHarvard. This might seem a bit pedantic but I promise it will help you as we move to the course assignments and future courses on the programme.
How does that sound Olubukola? So keep up the good work, keep refining your arguments and using the literature, and I think you will find by the end of the semester, you will be quite the critical edtech researcher!
Thank you for the encouraging feedback sir, I will improve
You are very welcome. Truly my pleasure.