The chairman, the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (LSUBEB), Wahab Alawiye-King, has again reassured all stakeholders in the basic education sector of the state of the willingness of the board to affect positive change in the learning-teaching outcomes of basic education, especially at the primary school level in Lagos. “We will continue to enhance performance, effectiveness in our classrooms. We have introduced Ekoexcel, which is leveraging technology to improve and enhance teaching and learning outcomes”.
Alawiye-King stated this at the two-day retreat for government-side actors of basic education in Lagos, held on Thursday 3 and Friday 4 March in Apapa, Lagos with the theme, ‘Leadership and Mentorship for Government-side Actors in Basic Education’. The retreat was organised for Education Secretaries (ES) in Lagos by Human Development Initiative (HDI) in collaboration with MacArthur Foundation to strengthen the delivery of basic education across the state.
According to him, the idea behind the retreat was to leverage on mentorship in enhancing performance, effectiveness and efficiency in basic education in Lagos state. He posits that the governor has continued to support the board in improving access to basic education, capacity building for teachers, and improvement in infrastructure; “these are some of the things that will bring about changes in the basic education sector,” Alawiye-King said.
Olufunsho Owasanoye, the executive director, HDI, said that the essence of the retreat was to help build capacity of the education secretaries, who are the primary implementers of education policies at the basic education level in Lagos.
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“We want to take them out of their main space so that their capacity will be built, especially in terms of the psychology of the job. How they can attend to workers who may not know they have issues – what are the skills they need to learn in terms of leadership and mentoring to make sure these members of staff put in their best,” Owasanoye said.
Bolade Mokuolu, one of the resource persons at the two-day retreat said, mentoring in leadership has a lot of advantages for the organisation, for the mentor and the mentee. For the organisation, it helps to train the upcoming ones and make their growth easy.
Mokuolu, a professor of Clinical Psychology at the Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti, who spoke on ‘Becoming an effective administrator through psychological wellbeing and self-management’ and ‘Mentoring and leadership session’ posits that the dynamic nature of the society demands for transformational leadership. “…because we are in a dynamic society we should be dynamic and keep changing. It is important that one become transformational,” she stated.
