Rethinking secondary school education in the new media age: A consideration of the EdoBEST 2.0 programme in Edo State, Nigeria

Osakue Stevenson  Omoera; Emeke Precious  Nwaoboli

doi:10.59400/fes1960

Rethinking secondary school education in the new media age: A consideration of the EdoBEST 2.0 programme in Edo State, Nigeria

Osakue Stevenson Omoera Department of Theatre & Film Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Federal University Otuoke, Yenagoa 562103, Nigeria
Emeke Precious Nwaoboli Department of Mass Communication, Faculty of Social and Management Sciences, Benson Idahosa University, Benin City 300102, Nigeria

Article ID: 1960

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59400/fes1960

Keywords: EdoBEST 2.0 programme; new media; secondary school education; TDT; digital backup

Abstract

Eliminating illiteracy has been one of the Nigerian government’s top priorities since its independence in 1960. The ministries of education and communication in Nigeria believe that “literacy” and “numeracy” are pivotal for economic, academic, and all-round societal development in the new media age. To ensure that literacy and numeracy transcend all borders of Nigeria, the federal and state governments often strategize on providing students with well-designed learning environments, technologies, teachers, and academic resources that facilitate functional education. This, perhaps, explains why the Edo State Basic Education Board (ESBED), the World Bank and Bridge International Academies (BIA) formed a public-private partnership (PPP) to develop the Edo Basic Education Sector Transformation (Edo-BEST) 1.0 and 2.0 programmes that focus on promoting primary and secondary schools’ education respectively in Edo State, Nigeria. The EdoBEST@Home unimodal mobile-based remote learning programme offers interactive audio lectures, digital self-study activity packages, digital stories, mobile interactive quizzes, learning aids for parents, and virtual classrooms allowing teacher-student interaction. Moored in Marshall McLuhan’s Technological Determinism Theory (TDT), this study probes the effectiveness and degree of attainment of the objectives of the EdoBEST 2.0 programme. Using a survey as a research design and a questionnaire as an instrument of data collection, three secondary schools (Ogbe Boys Grammar School, Idia College and Asoro Grammar School) in Benin City, the capital of Edo State were examined. The study combined this with key person interviews (KPIs) and triangulated the methodology with a historical-analytic technique. The findings of the study showed that the EdoBEST 2.0 programme has not been able to enhance secondary school education via the new media because the purported and widely publicized new media gadgets disbursed by the Edo State government to secondary school students and teachers, are to a large extent, merely hypothetical as the students and teachers have no access to the gadgets. With a population of over 4 million individuals, half of whom are under 30, Edo State lacks the connection and technological access necessary for remote learning. The study, therefore, recommended that the EdoBEST 2.0 programme be revamped and all factors hampering its set goals be addressed to ensure a positive impact on the secondary school educational ecosystem in Edo State. The federal and state governments must also review the academic syllabi to factor in the compulsory utilisation of new media technologies in teaching and learning and gradually phase out old-fashioned traditional teaching and learning methods such as the use of chalk and blackboard and the use of lesson notebooks without any digital backup.

Published

2025-06-04

How to Cite

Omoera, O. S., & Nwaoboli, E. P. (2025). Rethinking secondary school education in the new media age: A consideration of the EdoBEST 2.0 programme in Edo State, Nigeria. Forum for Education Studies, 3(2), 1960. https://doi.org/10.59400/fes1960

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Vol. 3 No. 2 (2025)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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