Corpers Academy group of Schools

Prior to the pandemic, one in six children globally were not in a formal school setting, with overrepresentation from children (ages 2-12years) girls and young people experiencing poverty, living in rural areas, conflict zones, or with disabilities. The pandemic has exacerbated existing inequities, as two-thirds of the young learning(ages 2-12years) population—1.3 billion people—do not have reliable access to the internet in their homes, hindering their participation in distance learning. Faced with the increasing economic uncertainty within their families, millions of young people(ages 2-12years) are being pushed into child labor instead of returning to school. Put together, these factors mean that far too few young people between the ages of 2-12years are afforded the space, time, or resources to build foundational and durable skills. Nor do they have the ability to explore their academic, extracurricular, and creative passions, or meaningfully engage with their peers and communities. 

Learning is at the heart of what we do. Learning takes place throughout the entire lifespan: in the womb, at home, in day care, at school, and at work. Research shows that the early years(1-12years) are a crucial period for learning and that children have an enormous capacity to learn, especially given favorable conditions and surroundings.

Researchers in numerous countries have demonstrated that early childhood is the most crucial developmental phase in a person’s life. Development is affected not only by genetic factors, but also by a child’s environment. This is particularly true for children from socially and/or culturally disadvantaged families.

However, three decades of work in child and youth development have shown us that learning systems and institutions around the world often fail to nurture children’s learning potential and support them in fulfilling their aspirations.

Our aim is to enable learning systems in diverse contexts to provide children and youth with effective knowledge, skills, attitudes, tools, and equitable opportunities to reach their full learning potential and thrive together. Our work is structured around the core focus of understanding and embracing variability in learning during the early years (ages 2-12) and early transitions. Our approach is designed to foster learning from evidence to action to systems across diverse contexts.

Our strategy is grounded in our commitment to being a leading learning institution that embraces a culture of learning and proactively shares what is learned to inspire systems change transformation beyond our direct reach.

Our portfolios are structured along three interwoven dimensions of learning—Learning Minds, Learning Schools, and Learning Societies—that form the bedrock of our 2030 strategy.

We have been working hand-in-hand with the regional government and several organizations for both marketing and development aspects.

In terms of marketing, we have been collaborating with Early Childhood Education teacher associations as our distribution channels. Those associations are HIMPAUDN (The Association of Nigerian’s ECE Teachers and Personnel) and IGTKI (The Association of Nigerian’s Kindergarten Teachers). To illustrate, there are 133,302 ECE schools in Nasarawa State only, which comprises 56.6 % percent of total schools in Nigeria. HIMPAUDN consists of 62,695 (47%) schools while IGTKN is composed of 70,463 (52.9%) schools. We make use of these connections by providing webinars and canvassing the attendees through each association.

Besides, we work with academicians from several Colleges for research and development purposes. The Colleges include The Electronic Engineering Polytechnic Institute of Nasarawa, Nasarawa state University. We invite them to join collaborative research and confirm our development plans. We also opened several internship programs from the Colleges. 

As a result, we have been able to improve our products from time-to-time and obtained 80 percent more customers in the first trimester of 2022

we began, over 3 years ago, we complete the first pilot year of our project. We have trained 30 teachers who are teaching 1042 children in Northwest Nigeria. These children from mainly low-income families which earn less than 1 dollar a day, usually from farming. Most children are between the ages of 2 to 12. Girls account for 40%.

We focus on children because they are the future of our economy. Unfortunately, our current workforce is unprepared for the realities of the future. We are releasing graduates for jobs that will no longer existing in the next 10 years. Many do not even make it through school: a 2017 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report (b), notes that in almost half of countries surveyed, less than one in two youth complete secondary school. Furthermore “between 51% to 63% of the graduates (from West Africa’s Colleges) were found to be ‘half-baked’, ‘unfit for jobs ‘ and ‘lacking job market skills’. The worst records were in Nigeria (63%) and Cameroun (61%).” (c)

 We believe that giving children a firm foundation in fundamentals like Sciences, better equips them for the uncertainties ahead.

At the micro level, we have re-skilled teachers with tools to make them more attractive to (and more effective for) their employers – the schools. This has created economic opportunity for an under-utilized trade and generates long-term social impact. 

At a macro level, we cultivated innovation. We would show both learners and their teachers, that education is a part of everyday life. It is beautiful and relevant. It is a skill that they will need to progress and build a career.

During the pilot 1 in 2019, we trained teachers who in turn reached over 1042 children in 4 schools, changing attitudes to the subject.

We hope to scale up to the other 3 regions in the country and reach 1 million children through 10,000 teachers. Focus is on kindergarten and primary school children from disadvantaged homes; (rural areas, poverty stricken, warn-torn, displaced, in drought...)

By Year 4 - 5, we will have completed modularization for the service and plan to cross to selected regional countries.

Our theory of change includes embracing variability in learning so that all children can realize their learning potential and thrive together.  Thriving is a dynamic process of optimal learning and development characterized by a child’s holistic state of physical, psychological*, emotional, and relational wellbeing.

Thriving goes beyond momentary wellbeing to include individual growth and positive enhancement across multiple domains. An individual’s thriving is profoundly influenced by their biology and context – the complex interaction of genes, people, and places – and how they respond and adapt to that context. Hence, learning and development are shaped by cultural, social, emotional, and biological factors that contribute to individual variability in learning needs, preferences, and outcomes.

While fully acknowledging this, Corpers Academy Group of Schools have developed  an ideology’s definition that aligns with our commitment to child learning and development and transforming education around the world as expressed in our mission of  Strategy 2030:

Our current approach in integrating evidence into our theory of change model includes supporting all children’s thriving, the Corpers Academy Group of schools embraces this inherent learning variability for each child and invests in the creation of learning environments, experiences, and ecosystems that adapt to this variability and equip each child with the knowledge, skills, and qualities to thrive as individuals contributing to societal and planetary wellbeing.

Schools worldwide have started to transform the way they teach and manage their institutions in light of new technological developments and the deep changes in our society, especially in the context of COVID-19. They have responded to increased heterogeneity in their classrooms by creating and testing new approaches to adaptive teaching, personalized learning, school management, and the use of EdTech. Schools have developed promising and effective approaches that equip students with so-called 21st century skills required to thrive in an increasingly automated, digitized, and complex future.

Highlighting, strengthening, and systematizing such promising approaches of school practitioners and creating evidence around their effectiveness are the main objectives of the School Knowledge and Innovation Learning Lab (SKILL).

Our SKILL program aims to identify, codify, and disseminate evidence-informed school innovations with a specific focus on adaptive teaching, effective use of adaptive learning EdTech and data-driven school leadership.

To maximize our impact, we work with school aggregators: institutions that group a large number of schools within and across national education systems according to school characteristics and a common objective to create knowledge and practice communities among its member schools.

For each school aggregator, a bespoke Learning Lab was established to support individual schools or school groups to strengthen their evidence level through iterative, data-driven, structured experimentation, and to facilitate learning exchange with peers via thematic or regional knowledge communities. Cross-pollination between the different Learning Labs of the respective school aggregators will be sought where feasible.

Selected best practices from SKILL was transferred to our research vehicle SEAL (School Evidence for Adaptive Learning) for testing and uptake at scale.

We have the following information from our past programs:

At the macro level:

• Proportion of learners mentioning science and technology as their favorite subject.

• Proportion of learners actively participating in classes (Number of learners asking or responding to at least 1 question in class Level of engagement in the class )

• Number of primary school children in the program who continue to secondary school and pursue STEM

• Number of primary schools that have adopted new delivery methods and steps of instruction in the new teaching methods for Primary School.

• Number of teachers who have gone through the training for the new methods.

• Number of lessons being conducted using the new learning methods.

• Inclusion and Performance ratios have been compared.

At the micro level we have the following indicators.

1. Percentage of teachers with positive attitude to science and technology

2. Percentage of teachers with positive attitudes towards delivery of science and technology using teaching aids.

3. Percentage of learners with positive attitude to science and technology

4. Percentage of learners attending science and technology, compared to numbers of those attending other subjects

5. Percentage of learners showing/reporting an improvement in their science and technology performance

 6. Percentage change in average / mean performance assessment results

7. Percent of students whose performance results improved from assessment X to assessment Y to assessment Z…

The program was translated into a hard and softcopy of the lesson planning Guide available at the school and in the project office

We are continuously seeking to understand the evolution of our program, so we will capture the average scores in the pre and post test assessment for the teachers being trained study these. We will also measuring the students’ preferred culturally relevant method of instruction (a question on their exams) and the Numbers of Teachers, schools and communities that accept / embrace the new methods. 

Corpers Academy is an early childhood education organisation reaching low-income children ages 2-12 in Nasarawa State, Nigeria, It has adopted an activity-based learning program keeping children and their development outcomes at the core of its work. It focuses on four domains-cognitive, social, emotional and metacognitive learning, taking a holistic approach to learning.

We are committed to being a leading learning Institution that embraces a culture of openness and reflection and proactively shares what is learned to inspire systems change transformation beyond our direct reach.We believe that intentional learning is fundamental to achieving impact. Our learning strategy is grounded in our theory of change and guided by a set of learning questions (our Learning Agenda), which focus on areas of our work where we need to increase our knowledge of what works (or doesn’t) and are designed to inform our understanding about the most impactful role we can play.

While hosting-LEAP Fellows as an educational researchers and social entrepreneurs is expected to support educational organizations and advance evidence-based education solutions across the world. Leap Fellows will support projects focused on improving the evidence base of a product, program, or business model helping to bridge learning gaps for underserved children ages 2-12.

 The successful outcome of this project will allow our organization:

• Access to the expertise of a global pool of highly capable research and entrepreneur Fellows who lend their talents to our venture, offering tailor-made solutions to strengthen our evidence base; 

• Tangible deliverables - such as roadmaps, strategic analysis, or research frameworks - from Fellows that will help strengthen our solution and theory of change;

• Professionally-managed project facilitation provided by MIT Solve, allowing us to focus solely on the most critical elements of the project;

• Valuable networking opportunities across the global cohort of LEAP Fellows and project hosts;

In our 5-years plan, hosting a LEAP project will enhance our organization With focuses on improving the evidence base of a product, program, or business model helping to bridge learning gaps for underserved children ages 2-12. and:

• Create a research plan to effectively measure the impact of a phone cast program on caregiving and early childhood development indicators in India;

• Deliver a research-based roadmap for the international expansion of an in-service teacher professional development program and methodology;

• Develop an evidence-based strategy for piloting a solution that measures and improves socio-emotional skills to support teachers and school leaders in low- and middle-income country contexts.