PearlShore Academy (Nursery and Primary School)

Vision Statement:

To produce to the world, a TOTAL Child, a Child that is: Morally, Ethically, Spiritually and Academically Sound.

Mission Statement:

A child that will be able to exhibit and impact their God given potentials on the immediate environment and the world at large.

CORE VALUES:

Morality, Spirituality, Academics, Leadership, Creativity.

The team lead currently functions as the Director of the school and seats on the board of trustees. In this role he influences the vision, mission, and core values of the school directly.

The team lead charts the strategic vision of the organisation, participate in auditing and evaluating performance.

He will be responsible for providing resources where required.

Setting up weekly meetings with the project fellows

Primary source of interaction between the school and MIT fellows

Provide required support and information to the fellow

Delegate responsibilities to team members

Will be the focal point of the organisation

As the director the Team lead influences the school’s strategic vision hence can easily drive the recommended changes and action items.

Drive the implementation of the recommended actions

Show visible commitment to the project, hence prompting similar behaviour from team members.

Cooperate with and support efforts of the research fellow

Maintain open communication channel and network against future research opportunities and projects.

Team Lead – The director is available and provides full management support

Mrs Olabode: Head of Primary section and supervises the teachers

Mrs Bello: Has a masters in Environmental Management and committed to the infusion of sustainability into education curriculum.

Mrs Abiodun O.: The Head Mistress overseas the day to day operation of the school and will provide required support whenever called upon.

The team lead and head mistress comprise of the Executive Leadership Team of the organisation.

While the team members are functional heads with influence within the organisation.

The functions of the team lead have been highlighted above. The functions of the Team members during the project will include.

Address assigned action items from the team lead

Support research effort

Attend scheduled meetings with he fellow whenever required

Will be paid incentives for the extra tasks.

Assist in collating required data

Assist in cascading information to other members of staff

A solution to promote life-long learning, achieve academic excellence while nurturing creativity and innate potential in children.

Nigeria is the most populous black nation on Earth, with 43.29% of its population between the ages of 0 to 14. (Aaron O., 2023) About 28.1million of the school age children are enrolled in both private and Government elementary and secondary schools (Doris D. Sep 2022)

Focus of government agencies and NGOs have been on the number of out of school children, which stands at an alarming 10million. (Vanguard, 2023). However, much focus has not been placed on the ‘in-school’ children and the quality of education they are receiving despite evidences of severe shortfalls.

Nigerian schools (Private and Government) have focused on the traditional mode of learning, the curriculum lags, the textbooks and their contents have not changed much over the years.

Another alarming aspect is the high rate of examination malpractices. This is attributed to the old learning method where students are required to memorize volumes of literature and ‘download’ at aptitude tests assessments whose format of questioning does not encourage reasoning but ability to regurgitate knowledge. The ambitious curricular that countries like Nigeria once adopted to rigorously prepare their political and economic elites for university have left teachers little margin to slow down and make sure all students understand the material (Bhattacherjea et al., 2011; Pritchett & Beauty, 2015; Sinha et al 2016)

There is mounting evidence that many children in countries like Nigeria  lag behind curricular expectations. Student’s achievement increases more slowly with every grade than the curriculum expects gaps between expectations and performance widens as student go through middle school (Muralidharan et al (2019)

Sandefur (2018) found that the average student across 14 african countries performed half a standard deviation below their counterparts in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the students in the region converged with their more advantaged peers very slowly, if at all.

The result has been high failure rate, drop outs, unemployed and under employment. Also many of the graduates lack innovation and entrepreneurial drive. Polls show that many employers in Nigeria believe the average Nigerian Graduate is unemployable and there is still wide use of expatriates for skilled jobs despite the huge man power available (Guardian, 2018).

While academic test scores are the main metric for whether education programs are successful. However, child development, learning and wellbeing depend on foundational, domain-general cognitive and regulatory skills that are not captured by academic test scores (Heckman, 2011).

Learning out comes correlate with life outcomes – including employment and wages and propensity of teenage pregnancy, addition, and / or incarceration (Danon et al., 2022; Das et al., 2022.)

We have found this to be true as our operating environment still has high rate of teenage pregnancies and is infested with young adults and youth that are heavily involved in cybercrimes. Nigeria is ranked first in African and third globally in cybercrime. Over 40% of undergraduates and 60% of unemployed graduates in Nigeria are involved. (Olusola A; Olugbenga P. Nov 2019)

PearlShore deployed its educational model with young children. According to Bau et al., 2021; Singh, 2019, Early years learning outcomes are sticky’’: low learning levels become harder to remedy later in a child’s schooling trajectory. Hence, our decision to start with the early years.

Our solution is essential as studies conducted by Martinez et al. 2013 found that in Low and Middle Income Countries, like Nigeria, only pre-schools (and schools) run by non-profits or private providers have improved learning outcomes.

CURRICULUM

Our curriculum is aligns with national and state curriculum, infused with the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) and STEM. Montessori method of learning is deployed in the Nursery classes.

STEM: The STEM approach fosters creativity and divergent thinking. It motivates and inspires young people to generate new technologies and ideas. 

The UK STEM curriculum has been adopted including Engineering and Design, Information and Communication Technology.(STEM.org.uk)

Learner Centered Method: Our Teachers are trained to serve as classroom coaches and not 'knows-it-all' instructor. This also influences our classroom arrangement.

Teacher to Pupil Ratio: Our solution include smaller classrooms with pupils to teacher ratio ranging from average 1:10 in the Nursery to 1:20 max in primary. This correlates with a study by Urquiola (2006) where smaller classes were proven to improve test scores

GOAL SETTING: Each child’s variable need is addressed in a termly SMART goals sheet. We regularly review goals and celebrate student improvement. This has helped to remove teacher’s bias about the ability of children from disadvantaged background to improve significantly. This correlates with research by Walton& Yeager 2020,  on the moderation analyses of growth mindset in learning.

PBL: Project-based learning and problem-solving help learners to form a special mindset. Its core is in flexibility and curiosity, which equips learners to respond to real-world challenges. PBL fosters creativity and innovation minded students.

CO-CURRICULAR

The following co-curricular activities have been infused into Learning.

1st TERM:

• 1)IPC entry and exit point days
• 2)Literacy Week
• 3)School Maths Championship
• 4)PBL field trips
• 5)Corporate Social Responsibility Day

2nd TERM:

• 1)Participate in International Sustainability Challenges.
• 2)Sports and Team Building day
• 3)IPC entry point and exit point days
• 4)PBL field trips
• 5)Participate in International Maths Championship
• 6)School’s Spelling bee competition

3rd TERM:

• 1) IPC entry and exit point days
• 2) Atinuda: PearlShore’s Day of Creativity and Innovation
• 3) Culture/ Leadership/ Social values week
• 4) Attend external Spelling Bee competition
• 5) Participate in local and international STEAM events

ATINUDA (CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION SEASON)

Atinuda (Meaning to create from within) is a season for demonstrating creativity among our pupils, to enable them to exhibit their God-given potentials. The children are supported to create things which are displayed to parents and guests.

Below is the usual line-up of activities:

• Science fair: Innovative scientific/ technological design and products
• Digital Literacy: Robotics, Coding, Programming, Animation challenges etc.
• Entertainment and Culture: Talent hunt show and cultural display
• Entrepreneurial Contest: Product development and pitching to investors, advertising and marketing.

For more evidence on our solution, see our Youtube page, https://www.youtube.com/@pearl...

social media handle: https://www.facebook.com/pearl...

Survey on Graduating pupils

We commenced operation in 2020 and started with pupils from Primary 3 and below. So, we are graduating our first set of pupils. We recently had a meeting with our parents and conducted a survey. We asked for rating of the school performance on our core value which includes: Academics, Morality, Spirituality, Leadership and Creativity. The parents scored us high on all core values but scored us highest on promoting creativity.

We also had a survey with the graduating pupils, please find below results of the survey:

SURVEY RESULT

While more than half of the pupils in Basic 3 scored below 50% of the set questions, more than 50% of the pupils in Basic 4 scored higher than 50% with two scoring as high 85%.

The result was shared on our social media handle. Kindly see the link below:

https://www.facebook.com/pearl...

FINDINGS FROM THE SURVEY AND INTERACTING WITH THE PUPILS, PARENTS, AND STAKEHOLDERS

STRENGTH

Parents value our solution and demonstrated their support by promoting the school through word of mouth, this contributed to the almost doubling of our population in 2 successive years with minimal advert.

Pupils value the overall educational experience and are very happy to have attended the school

They agree our programs are of high quality and delivering on expectations.

WEAKNESS

Pupils do not feel their learning variability is adequately considered.

OPPORTUNITIES

The pupils desire the deployment of more learning aids (i.e multimedia, kits etc)

The school can help to continue to boost their confidence level.

Pupils will appreciated more support to enhance their creative potential and projects they are passionate about. 

Interesting fact is while parents rated us highest in terms of promoting creativity and want us to moderate it so it does not affect the pupil’s academic performance, the pupils are demanding we do more to support their creativity programs. This shows some conflicts between parental and pupil’s learning expectation.

Furthermore, the hole in the wall experiment result was an eye opener, The variation in performance was not surprising as some of the pupils in Primary 3 actually had learning difficulty and had just recently joined the school. The pupils that did not score above average in the test in Basic 4 were also those with learning difficulty and below grade literacy level. The pupils with average and good academic performance scored above 50% in the test despite having no idea of physics and economics, nor meaning of some of the words before the class experiment.

The report was shared with the teachers and the key learning points which is: The role of the teachers in the 21st century shifting from the know it all instructor to more of a coach and that the encouragement of team work and access to the internet and technology among pupils could improve learning performance.

We commenced operation in 2020 (Post COVID lock down) and In the first two and a half years of our operation we have experienced significant successes with our approach to learning including but not limited to

Winner of the Trust for Sustainable Living (TSL-UK) International Essay and Debate competition (Best Essay, Best Debate Team) 2022 plus 2 of our pupils made the honourable mention category.

6 pupils have made the Honourable mention category and we have 1 finalist currently contending for the top position at the TSL international Essay and Debate competition holding in June 2023.

Our innovation got media attention and our creativity and innovation program was featured on Pioneer STEM TV show on Satellite TV DSTV channel 252 on May 20, 2023.

Good showing at the Nigeria Spelling Bee, narrowly missing out of the states final.

A girl with learning difficulties won one of the school’s spelling bee for her category. 

 As word of mouth of these results and ourlearning solution got out we saw our population almost double in one year, reaching 95% occupancy of our current facility and with a projection to exceed our maximum capacity by August

While we are convinced that our approach to learning works and we have seen early results, we seek scientific validation of our solution through independent review by 3rd party experts such as the LEAP challenge program offers.

A recent survey survey with the outgoing pioneer students (result posted in this submission) created some questions such as:

How do we better address the variability of the pupils?

How do we accelerate and scale our impact especially at a time we plan to scale our operations significantly within the next 16months. Can we sustain or improve on its current effectiveness?

How can technology be accessed and deployed more effectively in a school like ours operating in a Low to Middle Income Environment in a developing nation like Nigeria?

How can we fast track promotion of digital literacy in an environment where children have little access to internet, computers outside the school premises. Also considering paucity of social infrastructure like electricity etc?

How do we know we are on track to addressing learning variability and nurturing creative children?

How do you strike a balance between addressing pupil’s learning variability, our quest for creativity and the demands of traditional assessment in a way that can be validated before regulators and stakeholders?

Can the same solution deployed among age 2-11 years old children work with middle to high school age children by the time we commence operation in that area?

Since our focus is also on the future outcome of our solution i.e. demonstration of creativity and entrepreneurial traits by our alumni, how can our learning method and early evidence help us predict children’s behaviour in the future as they grow in a rapidly changing world?

These are the reasons we seek to strengthen the evidence base of our solution

Adhering to the requirement of the national curriculum while infusing elements of our adopted IPC, STEAM. Creating a curriculum that will further address the unique learning needs of our pupils without disrupting what has worked has been a burning question.

Addressing the effective deployment of technology and promoting digital literacy in a Low to Middle Income environment where children have limited or no access to internet, computers, basic social infrastructure like stable electricity outside the school. 

Embracing innovative method of learning while satisfying conventional regulators and stakeholders requirement whose primary focus is on the traditional method of learning and assessment.

Our target population are children drawn from heterogenous backgrounds and face similar challenges such as paucity of social infrastructure, lack of technology, poverty.

Our operational area is Low to Middle income earenrs populated. Some parents are highly literate, some are barely literate.

Heterogeneity in students’ preparation makes teaching more challenging-especially in contexts of low teacher capacity (Araujo et al 2016; Bietenbeck et al.’ 2018; Bold et al., 2017; Gainimian et al., 2022a; Metzler & Woessmann, 2012; Santibanez, 2006; World bank, 2016)

Heterogeneity affects a large share of school-goers: almost 9 out of 10 school-aged children and youths live in a low or middle income country, like Nigeria (UNESCO, 2021)

Part of what we hope to Learn/ achieve from the LEAP project is how to improve our effectiveness in addressing the learning variaibility among pupils and addressing foundation gaps as we keep getting new enrollees who have been pulled out of former schools due to poor performance. Addressing variability Improves foundational gaps in students’ skills;. Gain subject- Understand pedagogical knowledge to explain concepts in multiple ways and address student errors (Araujo et al 2016)

We require:

A scientific validation of our approach

Identify weaknesses and actions to implement to close identified gaps especially with addressing learning variability among heterogenous pupils.

Move into the next phase of our growth with a standard revised curriculum

Continuous support and networking with community of advisors and mentors

Project outcome can help us understand how to influence stakeholders such as parents and government regulators to shift focus beyond the traditional method of learning. Our result, partnership and research with MIT has the ability to make this influence happen.

We also seek some level of assurance that the creativity and executive function nurtured in the pupils will be sustained overtime. Executive functions (EFs) represent a set of higher-order cognitive processes that support lifelong acquisition of knowledge and formation of positive relationships through self-regulation and engagement in goal-directed behavior (Diamond, 2013).   We need evidence that our average alumni will be life long learners, possess an inovative mindset.

More workshop and interactive programs and sessions with parents and stakeholders.

We have over the years invited parents and stakeholders to our STEAM and creativity programs where panel sessions with industry professionals are prominently featured with a view to creating awareness about our mode of learning. This we will intensify post the LEAP project.

Active parent-teacher partnership

Curriculum review for effectiveness and inclusion of the new initiative and recommended action

We also plan to improve interaction with technology and promote digital literacy to its fullest.

We are focused on addressing heterogeneity as Mourshed et al 2011 noted: ‘’ Some of the school system that have improved the most in international assessments over the past decades have done so by reducing the scope and degree of abysmally low performance in their schools.

We aim to deploy measurable outcomes against a benchmark or standard.

We will test and validate the recommendations from the expert’s solution through experimentation and practice.

Management of Change process as we move from our current mode of learning to recommended options with minimal disruption to learning process or teacher’s workload

Better understanding and embracing learning variability in children by acquiring or having access to more robust body of knowledge on learning variability.

Deploy agreed action items to improve learning outcome

Share outcomes with learning communities to drive curricular review and promote policies and education systems that embrace variability-based education innovations.

This has been addressed in our theory of change

se below