The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has simplified the process of quality assurance evaluation in public primary and junior schools across Nigeria by adopting a digitalised approach to the exercise called ‘UBECOLLECT’.
This was disclosed by the Acting Director, Quality Assurance Department of UBEC, Mr. Alabi Baba Asaju in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, during his visit to some of the schools in the state, as part of the commission’s sensitisation efforts across the thirty-six states of Nigeria.
Asaju said the initiative was a unique paradigm shift from the old approach which was more focused on the school personnel rather than learners, with attendant consequences of not considering variables affecting learners performance and teachers delivery.
He added that the UBEC Executive Secretary, Dr. Hamid Bobboyi, in his quest for more transparent and valid conduct of the exercise, initiated the use of electronic gadgets for the conduct of quality assurance in schools to correct the lapses of manual approach to the exercise.
“The importance of inspection, monitoring and evaluation on the educational system of any nation cannot be overemphasised. This is because, it avails the implementers as well as policymakers, the level of compliance to set standards and learners proficient performance in school curricular, co and extracurricular activities. It also helps in providing solutions to lingering issues hindering effective delivery and quality learner outcomes.
“The role of school supervisors or inspectors in the education system is as old as education system itself. Years back, school inspectors were highly recognised and reckoned with in any educational issue, but be as good as it was then, the school inspectors focused mainly on the employees (school personnel), not the learners. The process was more of fault-finding and did not provide avenue for feedback mechanisms for the inspectee.
The major disadvantage is that it did not put into consideration the intervening variables affecting learners’ performance and teacher’s delivery.
“These disadvantages among other things called for a paradigm shift from the traditional school inspection to a more holistic approach otherwise known as Quality Assurance. This is a monitoring and evaluation mechanism which gives opportunity to a school to first self-evaluate itself before it is being validated by the External Evaluators. This is as well known as Whole School Evaluation (WSE).
“To conduct Education Quality Assurance in a school, seven aspects of school evaluation are considered. These are achievements and standards; Learners’ personal value and participation; Quality of teaching and learning; Quality of curriculum and other activities; Quality of care, guidance and safety; Quality of learning environment and Effectiveness of leadership and management.
“It is pertinent to note that the initiative to shift from the old school inspection to Quality Assurance Evaluation was sold to UBEC, SUBEBEs and FME by Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria (ESSPIN) between 2010 and 2011 with a series of trainings, programmes and sensitization. By the end of 2011, UBEC adopted Quality Assurance Evaluation as its major school monitoring and evaluation strategies and allocated funds to it.
“This commenced with the use of QA instruments manually and carried out with some lapses among which were, inaccurate data, error in data processing and analysis, officers not visiting the selected school as well as delay in the submission of school reports among other challenges.
“However, in ensuring that all the identified challenges with the conduct of Quality Assurance manually became a thing of the past, the UBEC Executive Secretary, D. Hamid Bobboyi, in his quest for more transparent and valid conduct of the exercise, initiated the use of Electronic gadgets for the conduct of Quality Assurance in schools which is to correct the lapses of manual conduct.
“Today, UBEC has conducted its Quality Assurance Evaluation in Basic Education schools with the use of tablets and cloud server, errors in data collection and processing have been eradicated, the quality assured schools are done with georeference which indicates the location of the school and majorly, the report of the school quality assured is submitted near real-time and can be accessed online. This initiative is a unique paradigm shift which had brought sanity to the school monitoring and evaluation by UBEC Quality Assurance Officers.
“All the QA instruments are now uploaded in the cloud server to be accessed anywhere through the use of tablet with the app called UBACOLLECT.
“This laudable initiative is done in collaboration with the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA)’, Alabi stated.
