Impact of radical digital transformation on future educational system

This year’s graduation ceremony is unique in the history of our school, not only because we are graduating the highest number of pupils since inception, but because we are graduating our first set of primary school pupils. A big congratulation to the graduands and their families. Our school has continued to serve as a leading voice in digital literacy; this is because we understand the dynamics and magnitude of digital transformation and the massive change it will cause in both our economic and social life.

Each and every industry is facing a radical transformation. In the retail industry for example, Amazon and Ali Baba Express are shrinking the sizes of their physical stores. The physical stores are transforming to eliminate the human workforce who are being replaced with self-checkout, warehouse robots, shelve staking robots, and customer relations robots.

In the transportation industry, self-driving buses and trucks, when approved for use, will retire millions of drivers. While in the hospitality industry, touch screen orders, food serving robots, robot chefs with more than 2000 recipes capability, room service robots in hotels, etc. are going to throw millions of people into a pool of unemployment. Assembly line robots and Artificial Intelligence(Al) are now creating a significant impact in the transformation of manufacturing industry.

It is obvious that in the next few years, millions of jobs will be eliminated, but the good news is that new jobs with new skill requirements will be created. The big question here is, how do we prepare our students for the relevant skills for future jobs? For us to achieve that, we must accept the paradigm shift from the present model of education which is full of obsession for grades and examinations, where teachers are the custodians and reservoirs or knowledge and learners are only recipient of knowledge expected to reproduce same at examination, to a system where learners are taught creativity, critical thinking, resilience, innovation, and agility.

Teachers must transform to become facilitators or lead- learners to lead an environment of collaboration, tinkering, experimentation, and exploration. This is what we do at STEM CHILD CARE ACADEMY. Our students are curious, resilient, confident, agile, and very comfortable in the use and exploring technology.

We are also striving to grow in all aspects. We have been awarded a Permanent School License by the FCI Department of Quality Assurance, and we will soon be accredited for Cambridge License to start Cambridge Point Examinations. General renovation of the school is ongoing to fix fire and noise-proof doors, fire safety equipment, and upgrade of the tinkering laboratory. The sporting facility is also transformed to include a swimming pool and football pitch, while we have also procured chairs, desks, and instructional materials among others.

Our annual Sports Festival which held on the 20th of March 2022 provided a unique opportunity for our students to showcase their talents. Our teachers and the parents Came together to socialize and shared exciting moments. Our first Quran Graduation Ceremony was held on the 26th March 2022 where six (6) students within the age range of 8-10 years successfully graduated.

The school held her first Common Entrance Examination on the 2nd July 2022 andit was of a standard set of questions, in which twelve (12) students altogether sat for it, ten (10) internal and two (2) external. The students can check their results online through the school website result checker.

The school continues to experience unprecedented growth, this year we are graduating fifty-nine (59) students, forty-nine (49) from the Nursery School, and ten (10) from the Primary School. Last year, it was only twenty-four (24). The student population now stands at two hundred and sixty-five (265) and admission into our school is now highly competitive as the student retention index remains high. Staff strength has grown from fifty-two (52) last year to seventy-four (74) at present.

To mitigate the challenges of this growth and maintain quality, we embarked on a series of training for our staff to give them the necessary skills needed to pilot modern education. We have also produced and signed policies that would regulate behaviour of staff and ensure commitment and resilience to service.