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Had Nigeria 10 or 20 million teachers already , it could consider achieving this goal under such a model . Unfortunately , today , there are only 2.3 million teachers in the country , according to the Teachers Registration Council .
Expanding this logic to the so-called ‘ Global South ,’ one might ask : how can its growing population be educated rapidly ( within a decade rather than a century ), especially in a world where education is the most critical factor for economic growth and health ?
I don ’ t believe there ’ s a perfect solution to this problem . But it is mathematically certain that the formula of " one 30-year-old teacher for every 15 students " is not viable .
THE PURSUIT OF NOVEL MODELS
African countries need to leapfrog to modern education systems , much like they did with telecommunications : in the 1990s and 2000s , the continent skipped landline infrastructure and moved directly to mobile solutions .
Western education models are not feasible for the ‘ Global South .’ Although many countries aspire to create institutions like Berkeley , Harvard , Oxford or Sciences Po , with some making impressive strides , the truth is that without huge financial and organisational resources to raise or attract top teachers , delivering this level of education to large audiences is impractical . In reality , such high-quality education is generally accessible only to wealthy and already well-educated countries . The good news is that there are alternative teaching methods . Online education can considerably reduce the cost of building classrooms and make education more accessible to millions of students globally .
However , teaching online also presents challenges . Massive open online courses ( MOOCs ) have not achieved significant success so far , as most learners do not return after their initial year , noted a study 3 . Online education must go beyond simply recording and broadcasting videos of teachers to students , in the illusion of addressing their needs .
Standard passive teaching methods have consistently failed — and will always fail . Studies show that lecture-based retention rates are only 5 %, while hands-on practice results in a 75 % retention rate , and teaching others leads to a 90 % retention rate 4 . Decades ago , management schools introduced case study methods , which have demonstrated a higher efficiency .
Now is the time for even bolder approaches . By get-
1
INSEE , ministry of education 1 , 2 .
2
The OECD considers the student-to-teacher ratio a benchmark for education quality , with an average of 1 to 15
3
Justin Reich & José A Ruipérez-Valiente , “ The MOOC pivot ,” Science , Jan . 2019
4
Refer to the ‘ learning pyramid .’ While this model has faced criticism — acknowledging that student behaviour is more complex than the pyramid suggests — it still provides a valuable framework to guide educational strategies .
By getting rid of lectures , you can forget about the teacherto-student ratio issue while simultaneously improving the efficiency of knowledge transmission
ting rid of lectures and having students teach each other through practice , you can forget about the teacher-to-student ratio issue while simultaneously improving the efficiency of knowledge transmission .
For the past two decades , I have experimented with " no-teacher " approaches in the coding industry , developing a hands-on , many-to-many educational model . We boast a number of success stories in Africa , Asia , the Americas and Europe , primarily using online models . In Nigeria , our Outsource Global Academy provides high-standard full-stack development training to thousands of students .
In Kazakhstan , during the COVID-19 pandemic , in 2020 , our physical school , which initially had 40 students , rapidly shifted to an online model , accommodating 400 registered students . No traditional school could suddenly scale to educate 10 times as many students without compromising quality ( assuming they would manage to upgrade their infrastructure ).
Addressing educational challenges in the ' Global South ' presents a chance to redefine the possibilities of learning and teaching . As traditional models fall short , advancing requires strategies that push beyond conventional limits . With the advent of new technologies and new educational models , delivering quality education to a broad audience is increasingly achievable and no longer a distant dream .
PHOTO : MUHAMMAD RIZWAN / UNSPLASH
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WEJ | September 2024