Beginning in May 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools in Nigeria on a greater scale and with a more severe impact on learning than ever before. 50 million students were left unable to go to school, participate in lessons and interact with their teachers and peers. This has not only left significant learning gaps, but for millions of children has also meant that they may never return to school, contributing to an increase in the overall number of out-of-school children in the country.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Nigeria had been making steady progress in providing access to schooling and improving the quality of education. To mitigate the effects of the school closures and enable this progress to continue, GPE initially provided Nigeria with US$140,000 through a global grant to UNICEF. The grant supported the Ministry of Education in the development of Nigeria’s COVID-19 education response called the “opening better” school initiative. The government’s plan involved providing alternative and remote learning opportunities using radio and television platforms.

GPE’s subsequent support of US$15 million COVID-19 accelerated funding enabled children to continue learning through access to diverse remote learning programs. These included radio, television, online platforms, community learning and take-home learning materials that were appropriate for each context to meet the needs of each child including the most vulnerable.

A digital learning platform to support in and out of school learning

Schools re-opened on October 12, 2020, after closing for over 90 days. Having developed a remote learning platform to support distance learning during the pandemic, Nigeria turned its attention to strengthening the quality of education and supporting meaningful interactions among teachers and learners both in-person and online. Nigeria harnessed its progress on its remote platform to develop the national learning management system, the Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP).

The Nigeria Learning Passport is part of the global Learning Passport initiative developed in 2018 through a collaboration between UNICEF and Microsoft as a pilot program. This initiative enabled millions of children and youth affected by crises and displacement to continue accessing quality education. The platform, first deployed in Timor Leste, was taken up by multiple countries during the pandemic to enable learning continuity during school closures.

The Learning Passport continues to be the platform of choice for over 30 countries around the world, including Brazil, Mexico, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and now Nigeria, as they aim to recover from the pandemic, develop quality, inclusive digital learning ecosystems and reimagine education to be more resilient during future crises.

Enhancing traditional learning through the Nigeria Learning Passport

In Nigeria, the Federal Ministry of Education has developed the Learning Passport with support from UNICEF and GPE. The Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP) enhances traditional education delivery by enabling a hybrid program involving both classroom-based instruction and remote learning.

The Learning Passport is a digital learning platform with online, mobile, and offline capability that enables continuous access to quality education. It is flexible and adaptable, allowing learners and teachers to easily adopt it as their learning management system or use it to complement existing digital learning platforms.

Students can access a variety of content via a mobile app or web browser. Learning material can then be downloaded onto mobiles, tablets, or computers without connectivity. The platform is open to all children in Nigeria and hosts over 14,000 curriculum mapped instructional and supplementary learning materials for Primary and Secondary school students. The content is offered in English and the Nigerian languages of Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba.

The upcoming offline version of the Learning Passport will provide an opportunity for learning to students who live in places with intermittent or no internet connectivity – often locations where children find themselves unable to access quality education.

The NLP makes learning possible even outside the confines of a school which will help address the spiraling numbers of school-age children unable to learn, especially in states where insecurity hinders access to schools. Importantly, Learning Passport provides an opportunity for teachers to access quality teaching guides and resources along with digitized capacity building modules.

The goal is to provide an effective solution to address learning poverty and close equity gaps for children both in school and out of school by enabling quality, inclusive and flexible learning to accommodate students’ diverse needs and learning trajectories.

Additionally, over 40,000 teachers have received training on using the Learning Passport along with tools such as lesson plans to empower themselves to support their students by integrating this digital solution meaningfully with quality teaching It is expected that three million students will access the platform in 2022 and at least 12 million by 2025.

With this new platform, the country hopes to recover some of the gains lost during the pandemic and continue to accelerate access to equitable, quality education for every child and youth in Nigeria. The Nigeria Learning Passport is accessible from the Federal Ministry of Education (FME) website.

What children’s say about Nigeria Learning Passport: