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Tag: educators

  • Outstanding Nigerian schools urged to enter $250,000 World’s Best School Prizes 2023 as applications open

    Outstanding Nigerian schools urged to enter $250,000 World’s Best School Prizes 2023 as applications open

    The World’s Best School Prizes, founded by T4 Education in collaboration with Accenture and American Express, are the world’s most prestigious education prizes.

    Nigerian schools were today urged to apply for the $250,000 World’s Best School Prizes 2023 as applications opened. The World’s Best School Prizes, founded by T4 Education in collaboration with Accenture, American Express, Yayasan Hasanah, Templeton World Charity Foundation, and the Lemann Foundation, are the world’s most prestigious education prizes.

    The five World’s Best School Prizes – for Community Collaboration, Environmental Action, Innovation, Overcoming Adversity, and Supporting Healthy Lives – celebrate schools everywhere for the pivotal role they play in developing the next generation of learners and for their enormous contribution to society’s progress, especially in the wake of COVID.

    Even before the pandemic, the UN warned the world was on course to miss its Sustainable Development Goal 4 of quality education for all by 2030. With over 1.5 billion learners impacted by school and university closures, that mountain has grown even steeper. The World’s Best School Prizes were founded as a grassroots solution to help build the systemic change needed. The Prizes give inspirational schools a global platform, allow them to share their best practices, and help others replicate their innovative ideas.

    A Nigerian school excelled in the Prizes in their inaugural year: Best Intellectuals Model School was named in the Top 10 shortlist for the World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity 2022. 

    Vikas Pota, Founder of T4 Education and the World’s Best School Prizes, said:

    “Every child left behind in the wake of the COVID pandemic is a child too many. Governments must take urgent action to tackle the global education crisis and ensure quality education is a right not a luxury. The best place to start is by working with schools at the coalface to understand what works.

    “We founded the World’s Best School Prizes to create the conversations that lead to lasting change. Conversations between educators learning from one another’s vital solutions, and conversations in the halls and corridors of power where leaders must sit up and listen to those on the frontlines.

    “I urge outstanding Nigerian schools to come forward and apply.”

    There are five Prizes schools can apply for:

    1)      The World’s Best School Prize for Community Collaboration

    2)      The World’s Best School Prize for Environmental Action

    3)      The World’s Best School Prize for Innovation

    4)      The World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity

    5)      The World’s Best School Prize for Supporting Healthy Lives

    A Top 10 shortlist for each Prize will be announced in June 2023, followed by the Top 3 finalists for each Prize in September. The winner of each Prize will be chosen based on rigorous criteria by a Judging Academy comprising distinguished leaders all across the globe including academics, educators, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, government, civil society, and the private sector.

    The winners will be announced in October 2023. A prize of US$250,000 will be shared equally among the winners of the five Prizes, with each receiving an award of US$50,000. 

    The shortlisted schools across the five Prizes will share their best practices through virtual seminars and showcase their “secret sauce” through School Transformation Toolkits with step-by-step instructions on how others can replicate their innovative approaches to help improve education everywhere. These will be available on the new T4 Communities app.

    The Prizes are open to all schools who teach students in compulsory schooling, and are legally registered with their respective Ministry of Education or government regulatory authority, including early childhood centres, kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, and online schools.

    Schools can apply online at worldsbestschool.org 

    Applications close on March 15th, 2023, at 11.45pm GMT.

  • Uganda’s Project Shelter Wakadogo wins inaugural World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity

    Uganda’s Project Shelter Wakadogo wins inaugural World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity

    • ….The five World’s Best School Prizes, founded this year by T4 Education in collaboration with Templeton World Charity Foundation, Accenture and American Express, are the world’s most prestigious education prizes and see winning schools share $250,000
    • …Best Intellectuals Model School in Nigeria was named in the Top 10 shortlist for the World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity

    Project Shelter Wakadogo in Uganda, which was founded in the wake of war and now educates over 450 children with one of the highest student retention rates in the country, was today named the winner of the inaugural World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity. The five World’s Best School Prizes, founded this year by T4 Education in collaboration with Templeton World Charity Foundation, Accenture and American Express, are the world’s most prestigious education prizes and see winning schools share an award of $250,000.

    The five World’s Best School Prizes – for Community Collaboration, Environmental Action, Innovation, Overcoming Adversity, and Supporting Healthy Lives – celebrate schools everywhere for the pivotal role they play in developing the next generation of learners and for their enormous contribution to society’s progress especially in the wake of COVID.

    Project Shelter Wakadogo was chosen as the winner of the World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity from among the Top 3 finalists for the prize, which also included Pinelands North Primary School in South Africa and Escola Evandro Ferreira Dos Santos in Brazil.

    The Prizes were founded by T4 Education in collaboration with Templeton World Charity Foundation, Accenture, American Express, Yayasan Hasanah, and the Lemann Foundation to share the best practices of schools that are transforming the lives of their students and making a real difference to their communities.

    Vikas Pota, Founder of T4 Education and the World’s Best School Prizes, said:

    “Congratulations to Project Shelter Wakadogo for winning the World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity. It’s time for world leaders to sit up and listen to institutions like this outstanding Ugandan school.

    “Far too many children will continue to be left behind in the wake of COVID unless governments take urgent action to tackle the education crisis. As a first step, they must turn to the knowledge and experience contained within our schools because those at the frontlines of education know better than anyone else the change we need to see.

    “We founded the World’s Best School Prizes to surface the expertise of trailblazing schools from every corner of the globe so that leaders can learn from their incredible stories.”

    Project Shelter Wakadogo in Gulu, Uganda, has flourished from a school with only two classrooms founded in the wake of war to now educating over 450 children with one of the highest student retention rates in the country.

    In the aftermath of two decades of civil war and the violence committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army, which displaced over a million people in Northern Uganda, families in the village of Pece Acoyo in Gulu were slowly returning to their homes. Amongst the wreckage left by the war, calls for a safe, quality school began to grow. Through a large community effort Project Shelter Wakadogo was born – land was procured, roads leading to the school were levelled and vegetables were planted to be used for school meals. In 2009, the school opened. The name Wakadogo reflects the school’s mission to extend a duty of care to those who walked through its doors, meaning ‘for the little ones’ in Swahili.

    Its commitment to providing free school meals, healthcare and quality education for the surrounding community, has seen the school become a second home for many.

    When Uganda imposed a long lockdown during the pandemic, Project Shelter Wakadogo quickly determined that online schooling wouldn’t be possible for its students. In Uganda, only 2% of the population has access to personal computers and less than 9% of the rural population has access to the internet. Instead, Project Shelter Wakadogo pivoted to conducting 36,000 home-schooling lessons during the pandemic. This dedication to continuing to provide education to its students was crucial as the school closures across Uganda saw children forced into the labour market, a rise in teenage pregnancy and gender-based violence.

    Project Shelter Wakadogo will use the prize funds to offer more scholarships for marginalised and underprivileged children in the community. It will also use the funds to set up an online learning platform to facilitate hybrid and catch-up learning, in case schools should ever close again, and share its approach and technology where possible with schools in the region. It will also use the funds to continue to provide mid-morning porridge and midday meals to its students as most in the wider community live on one meal a day.

    The winners of the five World’s Best School Prizes were chosen by a Judging Academy, comprising distinguished leaders all across the globe including academics, educators, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, government, civil society, and the private sector, based on a set of rigorous criteria. Judges were informed by a public advisory vote in which nearly 50,000 people from around the world voted for their favourite schools.

    At the same time, Dunoon Grammar School in the UK won the World’s Best School Prize for Community Collaboration. Escuela Emilia Lascar in Chile won the World’s Best School Prize for Innovation. Bonuan Buquig National High School in the Philippines won the World’s Best School Prize for Environmental Action. And Curie Metropolitan High School in the US won the World’s Best School Prize for Supporting Healthy Lives.

    A prize of US$250,000 will be shared equally among the winners of the five Prizes, with each receiving an award of US$50,000. 

    All shortlisted schools across the five Prizes will share their best practices through School Transformation Toolkits that showcase their “secret sauce” to innovative approaches and step-by-step instructions on how others can replicate their methods to help improve education everywhere. These will be available on the new T4 Communities app launched at World Education Week.

    To know more about the school, watch the video below-