Abiola Seriki-Ayeni: Addressing women’s need in organisations require systematic reforms

Abiola Seriki-Ayeni is a seasoned educator with a deep-rooted plan of ensuring that every child has access to quality education, and the ability to thrive in school and life. She is guided by the core values that on the path to achieving success, excellence, integrity and achieving results without excuses are crucial.

She has shown commitment to improving the quality of education in Lagos State by constantly pioneering laudable initiatives for schools, school owners and administrators, teachers and evaluators. In this interview with KEHINDE OLATUNJI, she speaks on the importance of education and the need to include women in leadership positions. 

Looking at your background and places where you have worked, what can you say really influenced your choice of career?
I am from a very education-oriented family. My father, Ambassador Ademola Seriki, was an educator; he started his career as an accounting teacher. As you may know, teaching is not just about subject expertise, the teaching career is really about the way you carry yourself and how you push children to do more, its discipline.
My family played a huge role in making sure that though I am a girl, I can do anything I wanted to do. My parents would buy lots of books for me to read. I grew up in a very strict household. Initially, education wasn’t something I wanted, I always thought I would be a lawyer, but in my final year in university (U.S.A), we were privileged to embark on a missionary trip to Haiti.

The delegation that I went with were all white, I was the only black person. When we got there, though I couldn’t speak their language, just because I looked like them, they embraced me. We went to villages that were situated on the mountains and when I was teaching those students, they were just so happy that somebody could make that journey for them.For them, it was a big deal that the white people came but when they saw me, the reception was so warm. I taught them for about a week and when I left, I just started thinking about the impact of education particularly how it impacts the way people see themselves and believe in themselves. So, when I came back, I decided to do a programme that focused on transforming education systems through leaders who are not educationists.
I entered an education programme called Education Pioneers Graduate School Fellowship Programme. About 7,000 people applied for the fellowship but only 350 were accepted. Within the two years that I was there, all my students went up by at least two stages in their learning. This encouraged me and I began to think if my sojourn in education was going to be temporary. I started thinking about the education ecosystem. The laws, funding and all the things I don’t have control over. Afterwards, I went for a Master’s degree programme at the Harvard University to study International Educational Policy. This helped me to have a bigger picture in understanding the educational skill.
Also, I recognised the importance of having a family that believes in education and the understanding that it can change a person’s life. More than anything, as I grew up, my parents always emphasised the importance of getting a good education. I realised that not every child has that push. I see education as a leveler, something that can level the playing field. Irrespective of your background, I believe education is a ticket to progress and I feel it should be available to all. For me, it was really easy to feel that if I have a career in education, I am going to be able to impact generations to come.

What is the role of the private sector in impacting the quality of education and what is your office doing?
One of the major focus areas for OEQA is on standardisation and regulations. We go to schools for inspection and give school owners or managers a letter of provisional approval to enable them to legally operate within the state. If you don’t have a letter of provisional approval, it is illegal to operate a school and that means you don’t have the requisite approvals from the state’s Ministry of Education through the Office of Education Quality Assurance.
We have a little less than 6,000 private schools that are approved to operate within the state and the expectation from those schools is that they will comply with government’s directives and continue to uphold the standards that have been established. We ensure that private schools continue with the standards that we met when we visited the schools for inspection. We ensure they maintain and hire teachers that have the necessary qualifications. For primary school teachers, the minimum qualification is NCE, while secondary school is Bachelor of Education. They are expected not to compromise because they have a huge role to play in shaping the lives of the children. What we have realised is that compliance schools are safe schools, when we look at the records of investigative cases concerning children and teachers, about 98 per cent of those schools that have issues are schools that are not approved. People say a lot about the government but the truth is that government has established a minimum standard and that minimum standard keeps everybody safe. Unfortunately, people don’t tie the two together; they believe compliance is stand alone, and a means for the government to make money. We have realised there is a need for greater sensitisation, we realised that, as a regulator, we need to play the role of an enabler, creating an enabling environment, sensitising and educating our major stakeholders, including students, teachers, parents and school leaders in various capacities.

What is the government doing to ensure that learning is not limited to the classroom?
We have a learning pack that supports the students’ learning when they are at home for long holidays. This is part of Lagos plans. We created materials to assist the students; we don’t want people to have 12 different textbooks because they have 12 different subjects. We felt it was important to create a learning material that has to do with what children should know globally according to their age.
The packs have English, Mathematics, Science, Comprehension, Physical Education, Art and lots more as contents. We put them into different sections for Junior and Senior Secondary Schools, Lower and Upper Primary. In addition, we know that students also need access to protection information, so we made provision for that at the back of all the books. For senior secondary students, we have affirmations in the packs like ‘always trust your instincts, when you go out, stay with your friends, be smart, and look smart.’ We also provided them with information on numbers that they are supposed to call if they have any issue, *6020# or the toll-free line- 08000333333. They can report any form of abuse.

As DG, what project have you initiated and the impact recorded?
My first is what we call ‘Forward to school initiative’, which came about as a result of COVID-19, when schools were globally closed. We had to figure out how we could prepare schools to reopen. We also used it as an opportunity to gather data that needed to be updated. We took the federal government guidelines on reopening and created a course of study online. All teachers, school leaders and board members were mandated to take the certified course. The course guided the teachers on what to do and at the end, they were asked to submit key plans on communication, learning, health and safety and operations. We had about 60,000 teachers who registered with the office.
It was a big deal. Another thing I would say was a huge win is the fact the during COVID-19, the schools could write us, they were not scared, they know that when they write us, we will be in their school with officials from the health and safety ministry in less than 24hrs. They knew that they didn’t have to run away from us, they knew that they had to write a letter to the parents, communicating what was happening.
We also created response guidance document for COVID-19 in schools. We told them shutting down the schools was the last option as much as they do all the things we told them to do. For us, it was a great achievement because we were able to garner public confidence.

Another thing I would say that I am really proud of is the fact that we have an incident reporting tool, which is available online. From the comfort of their homes, cars and schools, they could report any incident to our office. Of course, we have people that attend to them physically too and we encourage that because the government wants to ensure that there is continuity of documentation. On the incident reporting tool, we have had over 1,500 incidents that have been reported, ranging in level of severity. We treat all of them and we also go to schools for investigative issues. We go with the holistic team of officials of the Ministry of Youth and Social Development, and Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency. We don’t go alone.
Also, upon approval by the Commissioner of Education, we have recommended and shut about 27 schools within the state. Before, if schools were closed, there is no record of it, but now, we do investigation, we visit multiple times, invite the school, probe and if it needs to be closed, we recommend closure.

What are your greatest challenges in the job?
Every job has its set of challenges, and for me, I focus on converting my challenges to opportunities. There is an attitude that people feel accompanies government work. Things like government workers are lazy, and other negative things. There are negative thoughts about the government and its workers. What I have learnt to do is embrace this government. I embrace the workers I am working with. Though I didn’t choose them, but I have them. I am always thinking about what I can do to upskill them.
Recently, we got International Standard Organisation (ISO) certification. It’s a big deal. A team of evaluatorscame to assess how we handled our finances and communication, among other things.We are the only government education Ministry Department and Agency (MDA) in Africa to have the two ISO certifications. In Nigeria, we are the only one to have not just the two but even any ISO certification. We didn’t have to do it, but we said if we are challenging schools about standards and we want them to listen, we too should be evaluated, external bodies should assess our training, how we handle our communication and even our process of closing down a school. There should be a process and procedure for everything.
The fact that we focused on standardisation shows that this office has done well, but the office could not have been able to do these exploits without the staff. They will be here past the time that any political office holder is here. This time has been an opportunity for me as Director General to see the potential in my staff, in however way I can, and prioritise issues relating to them.

As a career woman, do you think a lot is being done to ensure female representation in workplaces?
We cannot underestimate the importance of visibility. When a man sees a job application, even when he is not 100 per cent qualified for it, he will give it a shot but a woman would wait to be 101 per cent before applying because she feels she is not perfect. We have to be willing to take more risks. What is the worst that can happen? We need to take calculated risk. Outside our work, we can be consultants, mentors, and coaches and have a portfolio of different work experiences. We need to self assess, where we are in our career and personal life, and think about how we have been able to get to where we are with what we have and think about how we can replicate it. There are various avenues to visibility. If you think you want to upskill in a certain way, go ahead. There are online courses to benefit from. The most important thing is for us to get out of our own way. We are the ones holding ourselves back. I’m not saying these things don’t exist, but we have to deal with them and how we deal with them will determine whether or not we are successful. It doesn’t matter what other people think to measure your success, do you think you are successful, are you proud of what you have been able to achieve?

What actions do you think organisations can take to promote gender equality in the workplace?
Definitely, we need to be more sensitive. We need to have a systematic approach to the issues that are confronting women. You find that someone starts a career, gets married and has children and the person decides to stay home for some years. This affects the person’s work, so we need to have workplaces that are sensitive to the needs of their workers. If we are in agreement that human capital is the best capital to have and important, if we are not careful, workplaces will be at the losing end. We talk about people relocating, this is because globally now, workplaces are creating enabling environment for their workers, irrespective of gender, to thrive. We need to be honest about these things in the workplace. Systematic reform needs to take place when it comes to addressing the needs of women in organisations. This includes things surrounding the family like childcare. We need to be intentional at ensuring that the table of power is representative of women. When you have a select number of people at that table, you need to ask yourselves, who is not there and what role do you play as a man to bring a woman there. Men have a role to play, like I said, it has to be systematic. Also, having quota helps, sometimes it’s limiting, but it helps.