Ayoola Akinyeye is a renowned educator and administrator, passionate about raising future-ready students. In this interview with IYABO LAWAL, Akinyeye, who recently joined Chrisland as Director of Schools, spoke on why technology and digital literacy are imperative for learning, and the need for government to review the curriculum to meet industry needs.
How do you ensure that the school’s policy and practices foster emotional, social and academic growth for the students?
The school has policies in place, although the strength of a policy is in its implementation. My job is putting policies in place based on research, best practices and acculturation. So, we look at what best practice is; what research is saying, and situate it to come up with policies that work for us.
But in implementation, I work with regional heads, who have the responsibility of turning strategy into operations. So, it’s easy for them to understand the operations of the school, and how the policy gets translated into practice.
I’m also supported by the quality assurance unit, which checks that the policies are being implemented. There’s also the risk and compliance unit that checks the risk and compliance of policies, so, where there’s a breach of policy implementation, the unit is contacted to investigate. If the policy is not a good one, we review, but if it failed because of human implementation, we can either retrain if we need to, or make changes.
My task is to merge academic excellence with behavioural intelligence. By doing this, one can foster an ecosystem where students not only excel academically, but also thrive emotionally and socially.
What is Chrisland doing in the area of technology and skills development to ensure that it raises well-rounded students?
We have the infrastructure, although the infrastructure in itself doesn’t solve the problem, it’s the quality of teaching.
We recently re-launched our own device, which is in its first phase, where we get the children to understand digital literacy, and that includes understanding how the world of technology works, the advantages and disadvantages.
We have embedded digital literacy into one of our very popular programmes called, ‘Ready for life,’ which has a number of modules in it. We teach about online safety, using technology to support learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), plagiarism and dangers. It is part of the curriculum that we’ve always had, all we did was review and make it future ready.
At the primary level, pupils do it once a week, while in the secondary class, students do it once a week, but have cluster lessons where they discuss what they have learnt, and bring up their own ideas and solutions to the problems confronting them.
What I think is cutting edge is the way we have been able to embed it in our curriculum; teaching them about digital literacy, the dangers, how to report online bullying, how to stay safe, and how to recognise phishing sites, among others.
Also, in addition to the ready for life programme, there are clear policy guidelines on what teachers can and cannot do, and what they need to watch out for. With the right kind of support and policy guidelines, we have been running it for almost a year now, and have recorded a good level of success. We are ready to move to phase two, which will include rolling out for a greater number of students and deploying additional online resources.
We are also setting up the Chrisland Teachers Academy with the sole responsibility of designing a curriculum that clearly has AI embedded. I’m not talking about simply doing a task and using AI; I’m talking of a curriculum that has tech as its core.
To do that, we need to learn lessons from China, Finland and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and see how they have pivoted their education system using AI and tech. It will be the job of the teacher training college to re-craft our entire scheme of work, to bring out what I would call ‘Chrisland Curriculum Plus,’ which is AI and tech-driven.
By the time the scheme is ready, we can then adjust the infrastructure to suit what the scheme requires. The teachers’ academy would be like a lab where we will try out and see what is working and what is not, before the next academic year.
How do you blend the Nigerian curriculum with the British curriculum?
I think it’s one of those things that has come to stay in the Nigerian educational space. We have looked at our curriculum again, and found the challenges and strengths. One of the things we are doing is to ensure we take the best in each of these.
For instance, at the primary level, we are adopting the British curriculum in English because it has a stronger scheme of work than the Nigerian curriculum, but we are contextualising the stories. We are embracing fully the British methodology of teaching English because their research is more advanced.
For mathematics, the Nigerian maths is more rigorous, but again, we are borrowing the methodology. What the British curriculum lacks in rigour, it has in depth, and what the Nigerian curriculum lacks in depth, we have in scope. So, the Nigerian scheme is wide, but its not deep, while the British curriculum is not wide, but deep. That’s the fundamental difference.
Talking about Nigerian curriculum, there have been complaints and call for a total overhaul to reflect current trends. As a seasoned educator, what is your take on this?
We need a curriculum that speaks to our needs, the British curriculum is designed for people that lives in Britain, it is designed to raise the workforce for their people, so also is the American curriculum. The Nigerian curriculum must be designed to raise a workforce for Nigerians.
Content wise, I think that’s where most of the complaints come from, as some of these contents are obsolete.
The world has moved on, so, the Nigerian industry has moved ahead of where the country’s educational system is; the requirement of the job market has changed from what the schools are teaching. I think it’s that disconnect that is making people complain, which is why you see those who are travelling abroad starting from the bottom of the ladder because you must be trained in their own education, which equips you for their workforce.
So, in all those climes, it is the industry that drives the curriculum. The people writing the curriculum checks what the industry needs, and adjusts it to ensure that by the time you leave school, you are industry ready. What we need to do is to ensure that our curriculum speaks to the needs of the industry, not about Britain or china, because we are not where they are; what we need are artisans to move our economy forward, our curriculum should speak to that.
For me, the curriculum is neither good or bad, but does it serve the needs of the market place? if it doesn’t, irrespective of what you are teaching, it is not working.
In terms of content, some of subjects are obsolete, and I wonder why such are still being taught and retained. There are things in the curriculum that one wonders what we are still doing with them. Taking history out of the curriculum in the first place was wrong. You can never find China, America, or United Kingdom take history out, why on earth should we take out history? How we study it might change, but taking it out was wrong.
How we learn is another major problem, why must we keep facts in our heads? This must change.
What are the concrete steps taken by the school to improve safety and supervision?
Like I said, it starts with educating the children to make the right choices, much more than policing them. You can’t police Generation Alpha 24 hours a day, but you can get them to rethink their decisions by constantly engaging with them.
We also work with a number of external agencies, so if we need guidance, external support is readily available. We also keep a very strict safeguarding record, extremely confidential, and we’ve implemented it.
