Exploring the State of Education in Nigeria

[00:00:00] Paula: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Chatting with the Experts, the TV show where I, the host, talk to you. Bring to you amazing women from Africa and the Caribbean. Every week when my guests come on, they talk about something that I know is not just interesting to me, but it’s also interesting to you, the listeners and the [00:01:00] viewers, but even more importantly, at the end of the show, you would have learned something new.
[00:01:06] Paula: You would have been inspired or educated on something completely different. My guest today is Sade Marriott, and Sade is the director of Banana Island School, and she is a fellow podcast host of Banana Island Living Podcast. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:32] Sade: Hello, Paula. How are you?
[00:01:34] Paula: I am great. Better still that you’re here.
[00:01:38] Sade: Oh, you say all the right things, so yeah, thank you.
[00:01:42] Paula: So today, as I said, she’s the Director of Banana Island School in Lagos. And so today we’re going to be talking about the state of education in Nigeria. You’re the expert on this.
[00:01:56] Sade: Oh, please don’t give me that top belly [00:02:00] because I’m about to fail spectacularly when you say that, expert. I mean, I do a podcast with another educationist called the Sade. So it’s Sade and Sade on education, but it’s, we’re pretty just frothy stuff and just whatever’s happening, topical stuff on education in Nigeria. But yeah, nothing deep or too intellectual.
[00:02:21] Paula: I’m sure you… I know you’re being modest. I’m, I haven’t seen or heard.
[00:02:25] Sade: I wish I was actually. I wish I was. I’m being modest, but with plenty to be modest about.
[00:02:34] Paula: Well, considering you’re the director of the school, you must know something about education. Tell me how you got into that in the first place.
[00:02:42] Sade: Well, it is the usual boring story. My mother was one of the first Montessori teachers in Nigeria, and she started a school, the Montessori school, and with an amazing nursery. But we lived on the school site and I swore to myself I’d never ever go into education [00:03:00] because it’s such hard work. We never had any holidays because we were always studying or something. And so I totally refused to do education. I went and did law and did a master’s. I did an MBA.
[00:03:11] Sade: And I thought, when you’re as bad a lawyer as I was, when you start skim reading contracts, you know you should get out of there before you do some real damage. So , I thought what I ever really enjoyed was just teaching children to read.
[00:03:27] Paula: Mm-Hmm.
[00:03:27] Sade: I thought I’d just go and learn how to teach children to read. And I got into it. I really enjoyed it. And yeah, fast forward a few career cul-de-sacs. Here I am.
[00:03:39] Paula: There you are. So when you went back to school to, as you said, your interest was there for children. Did you do that in Nigeria? Did you do it in the UK? Where did you do it?
[00:03:49] Sade: No, I actually did it in the… I was working in the UK then. I was an education solicitor, education and employment solicitor in a local authority education department. And then I [00:04:00] saw, gosh, you know, this could be so much better. It was in a particularly challenging borough. I lived miles away. I used to commute into London to Hackney, which was where I went. Oh, okay. And I thought, good heavens, this is how people go to school here. Then in Nigeria, we don’t have half these facilities. Most of the problems were children not achieving and I just saw the problems really started in primary school. So I went and did a PGCE at Canterbury Christ Church University.
[00:04:32] Sade: I could still work because I was doing a modular PGCE where you work at home and then you go weekends. I did this over a couple of years and then you do your placements at the school. So I did three placements. Two at state schools and one at prep school because I’ve only ever really known private education but I wanted to see what it was like to be in public education and it was really quite eye opening and yeah and I thought I could make a lot more impact in Nigeria where it was needed. [00:05:00] I mean it was useful to have learned in England. And how they do it and see what people think where the goals was, the gold standard, which was maybe bronze standard. Not quite. I went from the really high achieving schools to those that were not so high achieving. So I got the full range of the spectrum to a prep school that was pretty smart to one that wasn’t.
[00:05:22] Sade: I saw what worked and what didn’t work. And what fascinated me and what I wrote my paper on was that tension between creativity and accountability in education. Can you have creativity and can you also have academic rigor? And my argument was that the two are not mutually exclusive. There’s no reason if you’ve got a passionate teacher with great training and good pedagogical pinning, there’s no reason why you can’t do that. It just takes a little bit more work. But once you get the children engaged and the teacher has the passion, you can be creative, but you [00:06:00] can demand high accountability from the teachers. And I know middle class children invariably do well, but that, you know, doing exams and doing tracking and assessments is really useful for the children who don’t have the support at home.
[00:06:16] Sade: Because you can’t assume that everybody will be okay. So how do you measure if, I mean, we can’t, we can trust teachers and I do trust teachers. I know most of them mean well, you know, you can teach the same group of children exactly the same thing and have different outcomes. So if you don’t track and you don’t assess, you don’t know where they need support. It’s not necessarily testing the staff. It’s testing what the children have actually managed to get out of it. What is the value added? So yeah, that was what it did for me. Yeah.
[00:06:46] Paula: And so then with all of that.
[00:06:47] Sade: I hope I haven’t bored you too much. Have I bored you?
[00:06:49] Paula: Not at all. Have you put that meaning in? Normally I stick that.
[00:06:53] Sade: Just checking in. Cause I get, when I start waxing lyrical, I get carried away.
[00:06:58] Paula: But it also shows your [00:07:00] passion. It also shows you’re authentic. It also shows that there’s interest in what you’re doing because it could just be purely academic in the sense it could just be a job. But listening to you, I can see it was more than a job. It was something.
[00:07:12] Sade: If I wanted just a job, I’d stick to law. I was even a magistrate in the UK for crying out loud. But it was like every day was a chore getting up. But when you teach children, especially when you see that light come into their eyes, when they start decoding and decoding with meaning, you just see, gosh, you can actually make a difference in this child’s outcomes later on.
[00:07:35] Paula: And you know,
[00:07:36] Sade: yeah
[00:07:36] Paula: what you’re saying is so relevant because sometimes we forget that these children are our future. These children are the next generation. These children are the ones who are going to go ahead of us. And what we learn, especially at the elementary level, is what follows them for the rest of their lives.
[00:07:51] Sade: I think people underestimate the importance of primary education. Because now when I’m looking at CVs, and I’m looking at this degree and this guy cannot, [00:08:00] you get the split infinitive, you get bad punctuation, even with Grammarly, they still get bad punctuation, you get, and I’m thinking, these are things that they wouldn’t correct in secondary school. It’s in primary that you know where you learn subject and predative, and comparative, and all those things, the verb, the adjectives, those are taught in primary. And just how to write a letter. Which, maybe ChatGPT will do it for you now, but you still need to be able to correct it and make it your own.
[00:08:32] Sade: Um, and shorten things, and so I start looking, I know it sounds a bit anal, but I start looking at primary education in a bit more detail to see, and if you get bad pronunciation, or enunciation, or bad spellings. Which again, the computer can do for you, but then are you doing American spelling or, and it’s all about context. So how do you even correct what you see on the computer? So yeah, primary education is the big thing for me. [00:09:00]
[00:09:00] Paula: So this is the director, Banana Allen Livins. I’m sticking to the podcast. I’m sticking to banana Allen Livins.
[00:09:08] Sade: The podcast is just the plaything of an idle hour, you know. The real work is done at the school, but the play, the podcast, I just thought, you know, I need to get a life. Instead of just all about education, all about teaching, I need to do something slightly different. So yeah.
[00:09:23] Paula: But the podcast has done some, I listened to the one with the children and oh, it touched my heart.
[00:09:28] Sade: That was interesting. You forget what those kids know and what they think and as really, that was educational for me as well. Cause I see them, but I, you don’t really get to get that sort of treat them like grown ups and let them tell you what they’re thinking. So yeah, it was interesting.
[00:09:47] Paula: Yes, it’s always so great to hear kids perspectives, isn’t it?
[00:09:51] Sade: Mmm, yeah.
[00:09:52] Paula: So, coming back to you, okay, so you were in England and then you decided you wanted to give back to our country, Nigeria.
[00:09:59] Sade: I had a rush [00:10:00] of blood to the head.
[00:10:03] Paula: Which has paid off for many people.
[00:10:05] Sade: Yeah, my child is, my cost center number three went off to boarding school. So I thought, oh, freedom, yes. Let me, let me. So, you know, I was the touchdown mum for how many years doing the… my kid’s school was miles away from home because I was looking for the best school for this child. I’ll never do that again, driving miles just to go to the best school. So I did that for how many years straight, you know. And, once she got off to boarding school, she was begging to go to boarding school. She was tired of being at home with all the others. She was like the last of the hackers and everybody had left home except her.
[00:10:49] Paula: Okay.
[00:10:49] Sade: She was lonely and we lived you know, on a farm and it wasn’t great. So she said, help, let me out of here. So she left and I thought, freedom, let me go and [00:11:00] do, you know, let me go and try something in Nigeria. So yeah, that was interesting. It was character building.
[00:11:06] Paula: Here we are. How many years ago was that?
[00:11:10] Sade: About 10, 11 years ago. Yeah, 10 years ago.
[00:11:15] Paula: Well, you’ve done a good job.
[00:11:16] Sade: I mean, I tried to start it without actually going myself to employ people from afar, but it didn’t quite work out.
[00:11:24] Paula: That was pre COVID,
[00:11:26] Sade: in the UK in here. It was pre COVID, yes. Thank God it was pre COVID. Can you imagine trying to do something in COVID?
[00:11:34] Paula: I know. Mm. So God was preparing you for that. So now, but I left Nigeria in the 80s. And so whenever I think about education, I age myself by, you know, I talk about primary school, I talk about form five and some of my nieces and so look at me with a strange look. They’re like, Auntie, what are you talking about? So yeah. So you come back to Nigeria and you started this [00:12:00] school from scratch.
[00:12:02] Sade: Yeah. I mean, basically build a site and stuff. Yeah. I mean, I’m a director. I had support, but yeah, and I was involved from far away and then I came back to try and yeah, work there. I thought I could do it remotely, but yeah, it wasn’t easy.
[00:12:18] Paula: I didn’t realize that wasn’t going to be the thing.
[00:12:21] Sade: So Probably not, yes.
[00:12:23] Paula: How is that going for you? I know it’s successful, but as I said, I’m always looking at education from Nigeria, primarily from my understanding when I lived there in myself. So what’s the state of education now in Nigeria? We’re talking about I know your school is private, so can you talk a little bit about the transition you’ve seen?
[00:12:44] Sade: Funny enough, my co podcaster on Sade and Sade on Education, that’s what we try to do. She’s from a state background. Okay. She was a commissioner for education in Lagos State, so she really had her finger on the pulse of public school education, and I speak from a private school prism. [00:13:00] So, Yeah, east shall be east and west shall be west, and ne’er the twain shall meet, as they say. We thought we could meet and get a perspective on this. And, you know, there’s some really good education in Nigeria. I was teaching in London, not that long ago, actually, because I, having come here, I did go back and did some more further training and then some placement in school just to get more current.
[00:13:25] Sade: And what I noticed is children that come from Nigeria, they do incredibly well. They’re usually strips ahead. They’re better, they’re ready to, they’re ready to learn. They’re not faffing around. And then about the second or third term, without strong parental input or good or high expectations from the teachers. They tend to slip back.
[00:13:49] Paula: From Nigeria?
[00:13:50] Sade: And Nigeria and West Africa actually.
[00:13:54] Paula: Mm.
[00:13:54] Sade: ’cause we, a lot of the children come from very strong family backgrounds at home. Mm-Hmm. With great support [00:14:00] system, you can’t really misbehave in class and get away with.
[00:14:02] Paula: That’s what I mean. That’s why I, that question was
[00:14:04] Sade: your who born you?
[00:14:05] Paula: Who is your father?
[00:14:06] Sade: Yeah.
[00:14:07] Paula: Your mother, and you’re going back and then
[00:14:09] Sade: Yeah. But then when you get there, they tend to say, oh, I can get away with this, or I can get away with that. And maybe the teachers don’t have high expectations. So, I mean, children will rise to whatever occasion you put them in. When I looked at the statistics in England years ago, when they were doing the London Challenges stuff, African children were one of the best performers and the white, lower class or working class, white, lower class, working class children were the least performing demographics.
[00:14:42] Sade: When they get to secondary school, that changes. And we don’t know what happens there. So what is it? These are children who are high achieving. Is it that, is it the system? Is it lower expectations? They start getting into trouble. They start getting more suspensions, [00:15:00] you know, so there’s a lot to unpack there, which I don’t want to go in. But in Nigeria, up until the 90s, I think the education here, most of the people doing so well abroad, they come from Nigeria. Yeah. All these top doctors and stuff. People used to come here to look for our universities. I mean, say what you will. These were one of the top performing people, immigrants, wherever you go.
[00:15:28] Paula: Yes.
[00:15:29] Sade: So, hey, what, it can’t be that bad, it couldn’t have been that bad. Now I know, because the system has been decimated, we still have incredible primary schools, incredible secondary schools, if you can afford them. The university system has been so decimated that when you don’t have middle class or working class people sending their children, their first thought is to get their children abroad. How are you going to raise the standards? Um, yeah, and it’s, we need to have what we have, [00:16:00] what we had during COVID when people realized they couldn’t go abroad for medical treatment. Post COVID, the amount of really good hospitals that have come up in Nigeria, Okay. And I’ve seen people coming from the U. S. to come to medical tourism in Nigeria now. I went to hospital last week, and So impressive. I’m never going back to England to go and be waiting on the NHS again in one day with cheap HMO. So it really worked a 300, 000 a year. You can’t even that’s like two months HMO and it covers everything. You get medication and the equipment was top of the line.
[00:16:38] Paula: In Nigeria?
[00:16:39] Sade: In Nigeria. Then I went to Luce, to the dentists to get my x rays. They had top of the line x rays. I had my results immediately. They gave it to me. And I thought, gosh, if you unfetter these institutions from government palaver, they will do well because the people are [00:17:00] smart. People in Nigeria are smart. Whether it’s for crookery or for good, they will do well. Yeah. Yeah. I have children in my school, they’re reading at age three. If you put it to them, they will go, every child goes at their level. I find children who are able, if you facilitate them, they’ll fly. If they’re not, they won’t fly. Challenged, they start having behavior issues.
[00:17:28] Paula: Yes. That’s so true.
[00:17:29] Sade: If you challenge the children, they’ll rise to any occasion as long as they’re having fun. As long as it’s not by force. As long as they, they have that spark in their eyes when they come in the morning and they’re bounding in, Hey, what, what are we doing today? You know, you got, they just ready. But if they’re dragging their feet and everything, it’s a chore. Maybe you need to look at where you’re delivering that. But even in the state schools here, people, the children are desperate to learn. You have a class, I went to [00:18:00] KC one time and they had 200 in a class.
[00:18:02] Paula: 200?
[00:18:03] Sade: 200. It might be better now, but this was a few years ago. I don’t know what it’s like now. But you know, these kids were ready. They were ready.
[00:18:13] Paula: Yes, that’s what I always say. There’s a hunger. There was always hunger in Nigeria for education.
[00:18:20] Sade: Education. The local women who are selling by the roadside.
[00:18:24] Paula: Yes.
[00:18:25] Sade: Are making money to send their children to school. To send their children to school.
[00:18:28] Paula: Yep.
[00:18:29] Sade: And then the child will come home and they’ll pay for lesson teacher again.
[00:18:32] Paula: Yes.
[00:18:32] Sade: Do you know?
[00:18:33] Paula: Yes.
[00:18:34] Sade: Just goes to show. So yeah, we just need an enabling environment.
[00:18:38] Paula: We just need an enabling environment. Yeah.
[00:18:41] Sade: I mean, coming from a private school, and this is a segue, but coming from a private school background, what do you call a champagne socialist? I genuinely believe. That all these, there shouldn’t be, it shouldn’t be, I don’t think you can stop, I don’t think you should stop people, but it really shouldn’t be a default position to send our kids abroad, because I [00:19:00] don’t see what value added it is to the society. And certainly the government should not be subsidizing anybody going abroad to study. I don’t think so. These kids who have the privilege and the money to go abroad, I don’t even come back. So what’s the point?
[00:19:19] Paula: Okay. We’re having some internet problems here. Fine. All right.
[00:19:23] Sade: Yeah. I’m burning down the bridge that brought me across, as they say.
[00:19:29] Paula: But, you’re talking truth. You’re talking truth. Let me look at our people. We are very resourceful. As you said, we have that hunger for education is there. The competitive spirit to want to do well, to see someone and say, ah, my child would do better than me. That’s always been our culture.
[00:19:44] Sade: And so they don’t envy people who do well. They just say, ah, with a fair wind behind my back and God on my side, I will be there. It’s favor.
[00:19:52] Paula: It is God’s favor. Yes, but they don’t have problem with you doing well.
[00:19:57] Sade: They don’t have a problem with anybody doing well or doing better than them. They [00:20:00] just wanna surpass that person or meet that person.
[00:20:02] Paula: And there’s a deep understanding that it takes hard work. To think that we don’t even say studying. We say, read, go and read your book.
[00:20:10] Sade: Go and read your book.
[00:20:11] Paula: Yes.
[00:20:12] Sade: I mean, remember that song back time? Yeah, I do. You know, from way back then, you know, if you read your book, your shoes will be going koko. That means you’ll be walking to read your book. Your shoe will just be dragging on the floor. And that’s what you start out with. So it’s always been that hunger. Even more than, than people who brought us the Western education, I think.
[00:20:38] Paula: Yeah, of course, because as I told my children, I said, you saw it. You just had to leave your house and drive down the street and you knew the difference between whether you read your book or when you didn’t. Because you will be driving in the car and you see, not that there’s anything wrong with someone selling on the street and peeling orange, but you knew the difference was education and it [00:21:00] was ingrained in
[00:21:01] Sade: having access to it. Yeah.
[00:21:02] Paula: Yes. Yeah. So coming back to you and your passion and your love for what you do. You said something that really touched me again. You said the children come to school and you see the spark in their eyes and they want to learn. We talk about your school now, so.
[00:21:17] Sade: Yeah, but in other schools as well, like I said, Nigerian children want to learn. There’s a hunger. I mean, we employ in, I think this year we’ve got like three youth coppers or four youth coppers who are doing the national service with us. It’s so lovely to see the cynicism has not been dragged into them. They’re still quite, you know, idealistic and they like to see somewhere where they can actually be useful. I have one that was supposed to go for an operation and she was postponing and we’re all begging her, don’t postpone it. She said, Oh, these children, we want, you know, we’re doing our assessments.
[00:21:52] Sade: I want us to make sure that all of us, all the children pass that assessment before I go. And we said, no, go, we’ll be fine. They really do care. [00:22:00] And there are people here who really they like to see that they’re making a difference. If the society worked, The sky’s the limit. It’s just so depressing and soul destroying to see such genuineness, such passion, such enthusiasm, such hunger being crushed.
[00:22:20] Paula: Being crushed.
[00:22:21] Sade: Yeah. And that’s one of the things you learn quite quickly in Africa. Let me speak about Nigeria. It’s from the sublime to the ridiculous. You see people who are so happy with so little. Yeah. And it sort of gives you your perspective that I better shut up if I’m complaining, you know. Yes. I am super privileged. And on the other scale, you, you, your psyche does get brutalized a bit because you get used to seeing poverty and you see people and the inequalities and so on. So it’s to wake up and make sure , you give yourself that talking to, that you don’t become that person who is inert to other people’s situations.
[00:22:58] Paula: Yes.
[00:22:58] Sade: And like, [00:23:00] when I go abroad every time, cause I’m, I live half in the UK and half here. I said the first week when I’m back, I’m so nice to my staff. Thank you so much. So, you’ve cleaned that room. Oh, I’m so grateful.
[00:23:13] Paula: And then?
[00:23:15] Sade: And then after two months, I said, Ah, did you see that? You have to catch yourself. Stop it. So you have to constantly give yourself that. Talking to, and just not be that ghastly person who takes everything for granted.
[00:23:34] Paula: I sometimes wonder if it’s not cultural too. We’ve been brought up to say, ah, beg, shut up. Because, we are a society of respect where age matters. So everyone is kind of looking, okay, I’m older than you, so you’re raising your shoulders, you know, that sort of thing. And so sometimes I wonder if we feel that by talking nicely. Oh, I appreciate you. If we are not making, thinking that we’re making ourselves soft, not [00:24:00] relevant. That’s a theory that I have. Not a theory per se, but it’s a question I’ve asked myself over and over that if we can learn how to say the same thing, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it, but that start making a difference in leadership.
[00:24:18] Sade: Society is changing, but younger people will not take it. Even with all this senior, they’ll say, it’s a toxic environment. I’m off. Even if they don’t have another job, they’re going, they will teach you, they will teach you whether you like it or not. If you want to keep your staff, you have to be more empathetic. All that young girl, if I’m older than you, when we were there, we didn’t talk to our elders like that. Because you will have nobody, you wake up for a good calm day and you’ll be doing the work by yourself.
[00:24:44] Paula: It’s internet.
[00:24:48] Sade: They’ll just go home and sit down and work and go on Tik Tok. They don’t care. They don’t have any money. They have no job. You know, somebody will pay their bills. They’ll be okay. But I think [00:25:00] And, you know, I think in Nigeria and in Africa now, as we get more westernized, for good or ill, people are less resilient and more apt to take offense. Like in those days, everybody said, shut up Jo, and who cared? It wasn’t a big deal. The context was, it wasn’t, the context was not to put you down or anything. It was like joshing, it’s banter. You go to the market, they abuse you, you abuse them in the back, you know, nobody, it wasn’t like, it wasn’t personal and, and you know, every older person would say, ah, who is your mother?
[00:25:40] Sade: Kneel down there! I know. You didn’t think that person was toxic. You just thought, auntie, you two, you go, go back, auntie, you should forgive me. What is it? What have I done? So the two of you will laugh at each other and it wasn’t a big deal. So the, I think it was a more healthy relationship. There was a lot of respect, but then, cause you know, there was love [00:26:00] underlying everything. Now you can’t take that for granted. In fact, now you assume people mean bad stuff, even when they don’t. Not helped by the pastor who says somebody is doing you or somebody is saying to you. It’s stoking culture wars, stoking racist wars, stoking envy, stoking malice. Before, even if somebody is doing you, you say, Hey, all you people doing me, or, you know, you just speak it out there and you let it go. You don’t need to go into therapy.
[00:26:31] Paula: You know, so the pros and cons of everything, because as I said, internet, which you agreed with me has opened up the windows to so much good, but a lot of bad too, because when you don’t know what you don’t know, you accept what you, right?
[00:26:45] Sade: True.
[00:26:45] Paula: But now, as you said, there’s so much more awareness of my feelings are hurt.
[00:26:52] Sade: Yeah, my feelings are hurt.
[00:26:53] Paula: Yeah.
[00:26:54] Sade: Even if the person and because people are not really dealing one to one so [00:27:00] much. It’s all filtered, either through email or text or so the nuance of the thought behind that text, it might come out really poor.
[00:27:10] Paula: Yeah.
[00:27:10] Sade: Because you didn’t articulate well. So the person goes off and you get cross because they went off and then you don’t talk to each other. Then it becomes my new favorite word, toxic. So yeah, it’s all. And then we also do a lot of PSHE and PSED in with children now who’s a bully. We’re becoming more aware of bullying, but we’re telling them, okay, somebody does something to you once is not bullying. It’s an incident. It’s when it becomes consistent or a habit, or more than once, or then it’s bullying. So you have to talk to that person, show them your boundaries, whatever it is, [00:28:00] and then we teach them who’s an upstander, who’s a bystander, who’s, you know. So we do all that role play, so they can’t, you don’t necessarily take offense immediately.
[00:28:08] Sade: And when they’re like age Five, six, they start telling on each other. Oh, he touched me. Oh, he pushed me. Oh, did you do it on purpose? Did he do it on purpose? Were you hurt? If you were not hurt. It’s not the end of the world. Tell him you don’t like it and move on. You have to teach them resilience as well. Not everything you the teacher must go off on. And, I see that a lot. I saw it a lot in the UK where things are blown out of proportion, especially with black boys. You know, sometimes they don’t know how to navigate friendships or trying to find their space within a group. So they act up a bit. But with just coming from a different prism or there’s mutual suspicion and then it becomes a self perpetuating prophecy.
[00:28:54] Paula: And also I feel sometimes there’s not much, you know, you have to teach cultural [00:29:00] awareness. And now that we have more immigration into spaces that were not typically as integrated, you’ve got to teach, you’ve got to educate the educators on what to expect. Black boys, unfortunately, have been given the negative stigma, yeah, they’ve been labeled in a negative way, and they’re just being boys. So
[00:29:23] Sade: they’re more likely to see there being boys as aggression.
[00:29:26] Paula: As aggression.
[00:29:27] Sade: Any other it’s just boys, then they start thinking, Oh, they’re picking on me. Anyway, I might as well be aggressive.
[00:29:33] Paula: So it’s a vicious cycle.
[00:29:36] Sade: It is a vicious cycle, but then also the culture of low expectations.
[00:29:42] Paula: Yes.
[00:29:42] Sade: A lot of them, especially coming from Nigeria, they’re bright and if they’re not bright, they’re brighter than the ones who were there. Yeah. You know?
[00:29:51] Paula: And they’ve been challenged a lot.
[00:29:52] Sade: But I think I expect them not to be. Yeah. So there was one particular boy [00:30:00] and I looked at him, he had a Nigerian surname, but I think the mother was from the West Indies or something and he wasn’t achieving as much as we thought. I thought he should be, and I came in on the second term to that school. So I called his parents, I said, this is off the record, you are, this boy and I are going to wear the same trouser.
[00:30:22] Sade: You are a Nigerian man, and your son is not reading? Are you kidding me? What They said, Oh, he’s delayed this. I said, yes, but I’ve tested him. I’ve tested him. The first thing you want him to do as soon as he enters that class, if he doesn’t say good morning, he goes out and comes back in. So you show him what you expect of him. And I said, if he doesn’t, just in case he comes back home and says, I’m picking on him, I’m not picking on him. Break time, he’s going to go on, going to have his lunch and come back and he’s going to work with me. If he doesn’t finish that work within the allotted time, he and I are going to miss our break.
[00:30:55] Sade: He will eat. He will play five minutes and then we’ll go back and do the work. By the time we did this [00:31:00] for two weeks, boy was finishing his work at the time. The SENCo wasn’t happy because she said, Oh, you know, you’re a bit hard on him. I said, yes, but don’t you think life would be hard on him if he leaves here without achieving anything? A black male child not being able to read. Where is he gonna go? Yes. But what is he gonna do? It’ll be, he’ll be excluded from school by the time he’s in year six. Absolutely. So I see what you mean. But I’ve squared it with his parents and they’re happy with it. I’m gonna give him homework every day. So, and I want it signed. So you have to take interest in the children.
[00:31:39] Paula: That’s so changing in the rhetoric.
[00:31:40] Sade: Well, I think it’s just to let the child know that you’re on his case. You care deeply. Once children know you care, even when you’re hard on them, they take it. If they think you don’t like them.
[00:31:53] Paula: Right. That is so true.
[00:31:56] Sade: It’s hard. The work just gets harder.
[00:31:59] Paula: [00:32:00] That’s so true.
[00:32:01] Sade: And it’s to convince the parents that look, You come in, you have problems with me, fine. I’m sure I’m not the best teacher in the world, honestly. But, before we have that discussion or it degenerates, let’s agree that we’re on the same side. We’re on the side of the child. I’m not on your side. You’re not on my side. We’re on the side of that child. If we start with that prism, we’re good. Any discussion we have after can only come with positive outcomes for that child.
[00:32:29] Paula: That’s so true. And so that brings me to a question I have, coming back to your school now, coming back to Nigeria. Now, what provisions do they have, if any? And I’m not sure when I say if any, But what I want to ask is, do you have any, like special needs, any program for special needs in your school, or if not your school, are you seeing more of that being, done in Nigeria? In Lagos?
[00:32:52] Sade: Oh yeah, I mean, I don’t know if it’s just that, I don’t know what’s happening, but there’s a huge, and I say huge, [00:33:00] relative to what we had before. Number of children now with special needs. People are saying it’s post COVID. People are saying all sorts of things. I don’t know what. Delayed speech, neurodivergent. Children who are just not ready to learn, no matter what age they are. So we’re having a huge amount of speech therapy.
[00:33:23] Sade: We’re having, you name it, we’re doing that. And we’re breaking it down and I mean we have children as young as 15 months. We’re doing physical therapy.
[00:33:32] Paula: 15 months!
[00:33:33] Sade: Like walking on, you know, We get them to start walking on, on, on a beam, just balancing basic things like that. And, using pegs to, there’s no strength in their hands. We call it iPad fingers. They can’t separate the digits, you know? So you’re playing, you’re playing games like Peter pointer, Peter pointer. Where are you to be told to be tall? Where are you? Ruby ring, ruby ring. Where are you at? Uh, Tommy thumb, [00:34:00] Tommy thumb. Where are you? And they’re struggling to do that. So it’s an uphill task, but we find that if we put these things in place that young, by the time they get to age four, they’re ready.
[00:34:17] Paula: They’re ready.
[00:34:18] Sade: And the parents have to work along with us. The idea is to make it interesting and make it fun. You make it into a song because they remember things with songs more and you know, taking off their shoes is one of their early learning goals. Can you take it off? Can you put it back on? Can you… just give them tools? Keep them busy. They have to take their own bags no matter how young they are. They have to unzip it themselves. They have to use their table mats. Go and get their table mats. Put it on the table. Set the table. Zip it up. Tidy up. Put their rubbish in the bin. You know, they forget they’re crying by the time they do all that.
[00:34:50] Paula: And they see their mates doing it too, I guess.
[00:34:52] Sade: Yeah, and they tidy up. They tidy up. They learn where things belong. They just like being busy and it just becomes routine. So behavior [00:35:00] issues are a lot less. And they say, Oh, how do you come? They don’t listen to me at home. They listen because there’s consistency. And they see everybody else doing it and that’s the way it’s done.
[00:35:09] Paula: Yes.
[00:35:09] Sade: With Lullablove, because, and you don’t do an activity for too long if you see they’re getting bored, there’s a choice. And we read to them every day because again, vocabulary. If they have the vocabulary and they’re speaking, there’s less frustration and there’s less behavior issues.
[00:35:25] Paula: Yeah.
[00:35:25] Sade: So we have a target of doing five keywords every week. That we’ll reinforce and reinforce and reinforce. And those keywords will go into the books we read. Okay. The songs we sing, the activities we do. So by the end of a 13 week term, just multiple, even if they get two or three from each of those times 13, that’s a huge bank of vocabulary.
[00:35:46] Paula: Yes.
[00:35:46] Sade: For an 18 month old or a two year old. And that, again, you’re laying the building blocks.
[00:35:52] Paula: Yep. The foundation is strong. Yeah.
[00:35:55] Sade: Yeah. Language is so important. Speaking and listening. We play a lot of listening [00:36:00] games because we find that because of visuals, again, with the iPad or the tablets, listening is becoming an issue.
[00:36:07] Paula: So we even for adults.
[00:36:09] Sade: We don’t have videos at all, except when we’re doing a particular thing. Until they’re about five or six. They do ICT from age three, but it’s to, you know, moving the mouse. So we go really old school using the mouse and pressing. So they separate the digits again, and then they learn what, where’s the technology in the home, which one is technology, all of that stuff. But under that, it’s all, we play sound stories. So they have to listen to the stories and you ask questions. And they said, how many times did the chicken lay an egg? Whoop. They have to count how many they have to listen and tell you, oh, the chicken laid three eggs and they go, whoop, whoop, how many eggs did that lay?
[00:36:50] Sade: Laid two eggs. So you are forcing them to listen and the more they’re listening, the more they’re calmer. And then they go for listening walks where they listen to sounds in the environment and we come back and say, oh, what [00:37:00] sound did you listen? Are you hear? I heard okada.
[00:37:03] Paula: Which is relevant answer.
[00:37:07] Sade: I said, which one came first? It’s very important, again, listening to sounds and in the order in which, and we know the things like body percussion, when they’re clapping, you know, when you go, it’s different from, again, when they’re reading, to be able to know the order in which sounds are and to repeat it exactly the way they hear it. So you put in all those building blocks quite early. So when it comes to early reading, early phonics, it just makes life a lot easier and they enjoy what they do more. And we don’t believe in memorizing poetry. We still do that.
[00:37:46] Paula: I think we’re going to have to do a part two of this because I am so fascinated by all what you’re saying and all what you’re doing. That, oh my gosh, I’m almost like, okay, should we end this now? I mean, I tried to make [00:38:00] this 30 minutes, but we’re going to have to do a part two because I’ve learned so much. I mean, the main topic was what is the state of education in Nigeria, but now you’ve blown me away.
[00:38:12] Sade: I think education in Nigeria is great. I really do think you just have to be discerning and know what you want and what is works for your child. It’s not all bells and whistles. You won’t see all the fantastic tennis courts, but in terms of core learning,
[00:38:27] Paula: which is important
[00:38:29] Sade: outcomes for the children. I mean, if you’re well off enough, you can do all those things outside of school. We have good weather. The children go out in all weathers, whether it’s raining or sunny, there’s no such thing as, you know. When it’s raining, we make boats. We do floating and sinking science. All of that. So there’s no such thing as bad weather. There’s bad dressing for the weather. We’re in Africa, for crying out loud, we’re very lucky.
[00:38:52] Paula: Very lucky. Yes.
[00:38:54] Sade: There’s no reason why we can’t use what we have in our environment.
[00:38:58] Paula: Absolutely. [00:39:00] Where were you when I was going to school?
[00:39:03] Sade: Probably in my mother’s school, laboring under a pot just by name.
[00:39:07] Paula: You better read your book, oh.
[00:39:09] Sade: Yeah. We had to memorize vast tracts of the Bible, remember? For your punishment.
[00:39:16] Paula: Multiplication. You better know. 12 times 13.
[00:39:19] Sade: Yes. Times table.
[00:39:20] Paula: You better know.
[00:39:21] Sade: Times table.
[00:39:21] Paula: Yes.
[00:39:22] Sade: Yes. I remember when I do, there was one punishment I had. I had to memorize Psalm 121. I will lift up my eyes unto the hills for my help. My help coming from the Lord who made heaven and earth. But it’s stuck in my head.
[00:39:41] Paula: But look at it.
[00:39:41] Sade: And I remember writing in position when you had to write, if you do something wrong, you have to write how many lines?
[00:39:47] Paula: Oh, yes. Yes.
[00:39:50] Sade: You write lines. Yeah, but you’d strap three biros together so you can write three lines at the same time. [00:40:00]
[00:40:01] Paula: I think that would have been my youngest sibling.
[00:40:04] Sade: I will never be rude again. I will never be rude again. I will never be rude again.
[00:40:14] Paula: Oh, yes. Yes.
[00:40:17] Sade: But it’s been great speaking to you.
[00:40:20] Paula: I really have enjoyed this episode. So before we go though, you got to tell people where they can find you online. I know I introduced you as a podcast host of Banana Island Living Podcast, but where else can they find you? On your LinkedIn?
[00:40:35] Sade: Again, LinkedIn is the place, isn’t it? I really don’t do these LinkedIn as Facebook. Linkedin as Facebook doesn’t work for me. Judge not so that you shall not be judged or whatever it is they say. I do not post pictures of my congratulating my daughter on winning something or the other. But if you’ve got something work related or whatever you can just message me. I don’t post often but when I post [00:41:00] it’s strictly professional. But you can reach me on LinkedIn, yeah. But I’m not on social media. I don’t have personal Instagram. I don’t have personal anything. My Banana Island Living has Instagram, but then again, that’s not me alone, so…
[00:41:11] Paula: That’s professional.
[00:41:12] Sade: LinkedIn. It’s all business, yeah. I love it. I’m not a Facebook person, yeah. No, I’m not bugga as they say. I’m just lazy. These things require commitments and I don’t do commitments. My attention span is a nanosecond. Yeah.
[00:41:26] Paula: Boy, that used to be me, but now I can say to you, my viewers, you can find me on my website. You have a website, don’t you?
[00:41:33] Sade: I do.
[00:41:34] Paula: Yes. So in addition, to LinkedIn,
[00:41:37] Sade: There’s Island School and Banana Island Living. You can get me on there? Yeah.
[00:41:41] Paula: Okay. So folks…
[00:41:43] Sade: emails. Yeah, mmarriott@bananaislandschool. com or mmarriottadbananaislandliving. com. I do answer.
[00:41:51] Paula: You do answer. So folks, this has been great. Hasn’t it been great? I always bring you the best guests possible from Africa and the Carribean.
[00:41:59] Sade: You’re [00:42:00] so kind. And so, yeah. You’ve got great energy, as they say.
[00:42:03] Paula: I love it. I love the people I meet. And I would like to say, I would like to think that they love me back, but I really do love you.
[00:42:10] Sade: Oh, I sure do. I mean, nobody else could have got me to do a video. You know how I am. I don’t really do videos, but yeah, I have a lot of time for Paula. You’re a star.
[00:42:22] Paula: Thank you so much. And for you, my viewers, I want to thank you for always tuning in. You know where you can find me on my website, which is chattingwiththeexperts. com. You can find me on LinkedIn, which used to be my main and only social media platform, but I’ve moved on to Instagram. Not moved on. I am also on Instagram. My handle there is at chat_podcast_expert. No, it’s reversed. chat_expert_podcast.
[00:42:47] Sade: That was a senior moment.
[00:42:52] Paula: Yeah, that was a senior moment, so let me correct it.
[00:42:55] Sade: Pop those vitamins, baby. Pop those vitamins.
[00:42:57] Paula: I do need to take a [00:43:00]
[00:43:00] Sade: Omega 3, whatever it takes.
[00:43:04] Paula: And I’m actually on Facebook now. Oh, good. Yep, it’s taken me years, but I’m fine on facebook. Thank you, Sade, for saying yes.
[00:43:16] Sade: Thank you very much. I really appreciate.
[00:43:18] Paula: This has been incredibly good. Thank you.
[00:43:21] Sade: Thank you.Bye.