Lagos mulls school curriculum upgrade with AI

The Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, Mr Abolaji Abayomi has said the state intends to “ensure continuous upgrading of school curriculum” leveraging Artificial Intelligence.

He made this known on Friday at the Education Resource Center Ojodu Lagos, during the award ceremony organised for students-users of a technology-based platform, Darsel App, used for solving mathematics subjects in Lagos State public schools.

Abayomi explained that the essence of the event was to add more value to teaching and learning, specifically on subjects like mathematics.

He enjoined the students and teachers to leverage on the Artificial intelligence platforms to hone their skills.

“The world has provided better platforms through science and technology to achieve future goals. Lagos is happy to partner with such initiatives that will further boost the learning and teaching process,” he said.

The technology-based platform, Darsel App adopted into Lagos public secondary school to solve mathematics problems has recorded over 10,000 students’ usage.

This is as the State Government moves to extend the usage of the App among students to cover Junior Secondary School 1 – 3 from the JSS 3 category which it presently covers.

The implementation partner to Darsel in Nigeria, Mrs Wunmi Tolu-Alalade, said at the event that over 10,000 students across 100 schools in the six educational districts in Lagos have been using the App to solve mathematics questions and getting better learning outcomes in the last 15 months.

Tolu-Alalade explained that within one academic calendar year of 2023/2024, about five million mathematics questions have been solved by the students.

“This is the state award ceremony to appreciate and recognise the students that have utilised the Darsel learning platform and the students were chosen because they answered thousands of maths questions correctly.

“As we all know, with the development in technology now, particularly the artificial intelligence usage, we need something that students can practice with.

“Mathematics being a peculiar subject, we have interests of students, so we look at a way that we can support them so that they can continue to practice and the teachers get feedback every time at their fingertips to observe their weak points and know where they can come in to help the students.

“Over 10,000 students across 100 schools in the six educational districts in Lagos have been using the App to solve mathematics questions and getting better learning outcomes in the last 15 months,” she said.

She added, “We intend to continue to support this initiative and ensure continuous upgrading of the curriculum and before the beginning of the next academic session the App will incorporate all the Junior categories in Lagos State from JSS1 to JSS3.”

She, however, called for more partnerships to reach out to the students towards improving the process of learning mathematics in Lagos state.

The CEO of Darsel, Mr Abdulhamid Haidar, maintained that education technology is the future as he thanked the Lagos State government for the opportunity to use technology in teaching students “with a promise to resolve some challenges experienced during the 15 months”.

He noted that “the learning app would also improve students’ critical thinking in solving societal problems.”

Some of the teachers and students who commended Lagos State for the partnership identified some of their challenges during the period to include the availability of Android phones especially in boarding schools, and lack of knowledge on the part of parents, among others.

Six educational district champions were rewarded, while three outstanding students from Gbara Community Secondary School, Jakande emerged overall in the State.

Darsel App is a unique feature that creates solutions for both teachers and students making learning mathematics, a seemingly difficult subject, easier and simpler to solve.