Ekiti State SUBEB Executive Chairman Prof Femi Akinwunmi has disclosed that the state government through the National Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), Ondo has trained over 2000 teachers and other personnel towards the actualization of digitalization of the Basic Education Sector. He made this disclosure during a workshop organized for Mentors, Coaches, and Supervisors which was held at Ado-Ekiti on February 21, 2024.

The Ekiti SUBEB Boss opined that “all over the world people have embraced technology much more than we think; there is nothing you can do now without technology. Technology has taken over all parts of our system and it has become imperative to appreciate the role of technology in teaching, learning, and supervision of our schools so that the next generation will be better placed in appreciating the world”.

He declared that the training was designed to equip the personnel with requisite digital skills for effectual and proper monitoring of school-related challenges in the state. He, however, tasked the participants to pay attention to the training, as they will also train other teachers in the use of the skills acquired. While restating the commitment of the Board to repositioning EKSUBEB for greater efficiency, Akinwunmi averred that all the board members have been assigned specific supervisory roles for better efficiency, stressing that the workforce must be equipped with the necessary skills required in the workplace. He assured participants at the training that the government would continue to train and retrain its workforce to achieve its plans for a 21st–century economy.

Also speaking at the opening ceremony, the Head, of Training and Research Department NIEPA Ondo, Dr. Samson Oyeromi who represented the Acting Director General Dr. David Shofoyeke, according to Oyeromi, the world is now depending on the digital economy, so this is what the training programme is advocating, that the mentors, coaches, and supervisors should appreciate the use of digital learning in today’s world. In his words, “We have come together to learn; we are going to unlearn some of the things we have learned before, we are going to learn new things, some of the things we are going to learn here, we have gone through before; some of the things the facilitators are going to take us through, we have gone through before, this training is to refresh our mindset as well as prepare us for the task ahead.”

He restated NIEPA’s commitment to improving the basic education sub-sector in Ekiti State and affirmed that the Institute would continue to collaborate with the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Federal Ministry of Education (FME), various SUBEBs, and all other Education stakeholders to improve the skills and capacity of administrators and teachers in the basic education sub-sector Nigeria.

The ongoing digitalization of the Ekiti State Basic Education sector via the usage of the BAMIS application introduced by UBEC-BESDA is a giant step in addressing the out-of-school children menace and other problems affecting the nation’s education sector.