LEARNigeria Scales Up to Six States

PAL Network member, LEARNigeria is a citizen-led household survey of learning in Nigeria. An acronym for ‘Let’s Engage, Assess and Report Nigeria’, the programme is aimed at generating evidence on the foundational numeracy and literacy skills in Nigerian children. The data generated will then be used to strengthen education policy making and equip a wide array of education sector stakeholders with information to improve learning outcomes in Nigeria.

In 2015, The Education Partnership (TEP) Centre initiated the pilot phase of LEARNigeria. Since the successful pilot of LEARNigeria, the scope of the project has been expanded and plans have been made for LEARNigeria to be implemented in six Nigerian states – Lagos, Kano, Taraba, Plateau, Ebonyi, and Akwa Ibom – representing the six (6) geopolitical zones in the country.

As a first step in the scale-up phase of the LEARNigeria project, a techinical workshop was held in March 2015 for the development of test materials. Additional local language literacy tests were added to the testing materials. In the scale-up phase, assessment tests will be conducted in Yoruba and Igbo languages, in addition to the already existing Hausa language tests.

Experts from PAL Network and government institutions – National Population Commission, National Bureau of Statistics, Federal Ministry of Education – were participants at the workshop. Experts from development partners, the private sector, tertiary institutions and school teachers also participated in the workshop and contributed to development of the test materials.

By the end of the workshop, the participants’ had successfully reviewed the test frameworks that were used during the pilot phase, and developed frameworks for English, Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo languages. Additionally, participants agreed on building and maintaiting paternships with relevant government and civil society stakeholders that would contribute to the successful implementation of the scale-up phase of the LEARNigeria project.

Following from the workshop in March, a roundtable meeting was held in May, 2017 with stakeholders Kano, Taraba, and Plateau States which are located in the northern region of the country. 

The main purpose of this meeting was to engage the support of the government officials in these states, bringing them on board as official partners with LEARNigeria. The roundtable meeting presented the LEARNigeria team the opportunity to highlight the pilot phase of the LEARNigeria programme and share the plans for the scale-up, which emphasized the benefits of this programme to the Nigerian child.

Education Commissioners and Permanent Secretaries from the northern part of Nigeria, experts from the National Population Commission, National Bureau of Statistics, and Federal Ministry of Education were among the key particpants in the roundtable meeting. At the end of the meeting, these government officials expressed excitement about the project. Citing this as a significant channel to improving the quality of learning, the stakeholders guranteed the LEARNigeria team their support for the scale-up phase of LEARNigeria.