The Journey of a Million Books

Since 2021, the EdoBEST programme had orchestrated the distribution of over 11 million instructional materials including exams, textbooks, posters, homework books, flashcards and supplementary literacy materials across Edo state.

This year, more books have been distributed to support teachers and pupils in a bid to deepen the culture of learning through the reading of books.

“When it is book distribution season all hands are on deck. It is a herculean task distributing books to almost half a million pupils scattered across over a thousand schools.

“But we do it judiciously and joyously because we know that we are securing the future,” an Edo State Universal Basic Education Board staff involved in the book distribution process said.

Upon the launch of the EdoBEST programme, it became a state policy that all pupils in public primary schools have access to textbooks to facilitate their education and personal development.

But beyond distribution of books and a policy that encourages the reading, EdoBEST has been at the forefront of cultivating the ability of pupils to read.

A grim statistics

Back in 2021, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) disclosed that 70 per cent of Nigerian children were going through a learning crisis, as statistics from the ‘Learning Crisis in the Nigerian Literacy of 2021’ revealed that 53 per cent of 10-year-olds could neither read nor write.

On the other hand, the World Bank states that “all children should be able to read by age 10. Reading is a gateway for learning as the child progresses through school – and conversely, an inability to read slams that gate shut.”
In a 2022 lecture delivered by Manar Ahmed Sharouda, Education Manager, UNICEF Nigeria with the title, ‘Stealing foundational literacy and numeracy in Nigeria,’ it was stated that “apart from facing a learning crisis with learning outcomes being one of the lowest, there was an inadequate and underprepared workforce in the education system in Nigeria.”

The EdoBEST programme is not only paying attending to developing literacy skills among pupils, but also improving the capacity of teachers to deliver on their mandate.

Care was taken at the inception of EdoBEST to ensure that all pupils were equipped and empowered to read.
An immediate intervention at the start of EdoBEST was Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) which was used to drastically improve the ability of Edo pupils to read a simple and complex texts.

“When TaRL some of the pupils were ashamed because we tested them, and they had to undertake literacy intervention studies with pupils that were younger than them in terms of class and age. But in the end the literacy and numeracy skills of all the pupils significantly improved.”

This 360-turnaround in the school system is the reason EdoBEST is well positioned to mark World Book Day because Edo SUBEB does not only have what it takes to distribute books to the state-owned primary schools, but the pupils have developed a liking for reading, singing from books and telling the stories they find in books.

Research findings show the progress of EdoBEST pupils in the area of reading. A survey conducted months after the implementation of the EdoBEST programme revealed that the reading capability of Edo pupils improved considerably.

The report noted that “the literacy revision exam covered basic reading comprehension skills that primary 3 and primary 4 pupils should have already mastered. Looking at questions on a simple reading passage, we find that EdoBEST pupils were more likely to correctly answer comprehension questions.”

As UNICEF World Book Day is marked globally, EdoBEST is on the right pedestal as it has championed the course of reading and drawn attention to the use of reading as a tool for sharing ideas, obtaining information, and enabling far-reaching forms of dialogue between people across different geographical areas.
EdoBEST has facilitated the journeys of over a million books.