KINTOBS SETTING A SOLID FOUNDATION FOR JUNIOR ACADEMY EDUCATION IN NIGERIA
As CEO Ajoke Adeleke Strives to Achieve More With Kintobs
story by kingsley umoh, Glory Eze
Education is important for economic growth, social integration and the building of a sane society. Junior academy education is a crucial stage where the future of the next generation is carved out, nurtured and established.
All over the world, the junior school system has been seen as the gateway to providing not only an educated citizenry, but also a capable work force. In Nigeria, the junior level of education plays a crucial role in both the development of the individual and society.
It is on this premise that KINTOBS JUNIOR ACADEMY is focused to give every child a solid foundation in life. The school sees the adult in every child, and tailored them to being the best in their different fields, in order to compete globally with any exceptional child, with premium etched on Foundation.
EDUCARE NEWS had an extensive interview session with the founder/ CEO of Kintobs Junior Academy, Mrs Ajoke Adeleke, an educational enthusiast, a visionary, and an experience campaigner in the advancement of education in Nigeria.
In what was an intriguing, exciting and revealing interview session, Mrs Adeleke, gave an insight on how the journey started with KINSTOBS, their aspiration, teaching technique, quality and style, challenges and other issues hinged on the Nigeria education system.
THE KINTOBS JOURNEY
Kintobs Academy was established in 2011, we started operation on the 7th of June, 2011. We are 10 years this year, and to the Glory of God, we have grown this far, and we are still growing.
We actually started as a crèche, the intension is to provide an enabling environment, where working parent can bring their children, somewhere that is a home away from home, and within a short time into that, we saw the reason of having a pre-school.
Our pre-school have a lot of history, and with that, we have been growing. When our pre-scholars were of age, we went fully into the primary section of the school.
We have been with that for a while, we adopted the Nigerian curriculum and British curriculum, the British is a blended curriculum for some aspect of verbal and important news we see in other curriculum that can fit in, so we have a robust curriculum even within most curriculum.
We are so proud of the children, and the quality we churn out into secondary school. They are doing fine in this place, some of them that are here, are from a very good foundation, our teachers that are now in the secondary school can really affirmed this product are top notch, these ones are good and we are happy and it gives us honour and confidence to do more. Our teachers are very great asset to the glory of God. We train and re-train them, and on their own they try as much as possible to group themselves and make sure they are able to catch up with the standard.
Our crèche pupils now know the name of their country, people marvel at this, we also carry out mental drill on them every Tuesday to engage them on things they have learnt the previous week, and we take them on Abacus classes that help their mental alertness, and also help them majorly in their mathematics.
Our children know that Nigeria is divided into six geo-political zones, they know the name of the zones, they know all the states that are under each zones, our Nursery 2, Basic 1 etc. Each one of them can contribute on intellectual discourse, even when we talk about the natural resources, we look at what we really talk about, then we ‘break it down’ and everybody get to understand.
WE ARE STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS
Kintobs is a work in progress because there is always a room for improvement, in our previous session, we do not know anything about Abacus, but we have introduced it in our last session. During our summer lesson, we introduced what we called ‘A WORD A DAY’ [AWAD], so as we are progressing, we are seeing reasons to bring in one thing or the other that will make the children better. In this generation, things are now different and the current COVID-19 situation has brought a new reality, our examination is now on CBT, our Nursery 2 up to the secondary, they all do CBT, so they are prepared for it even when they are to go for any external exams and they see it, it won’t be new to them, so COVID brought that, and we have been able to sustain it effectively.
We invest in buying computers, so when it is exam time they all know their password they know everything they need to know about accessing a system. They write their exams and we publish their result online so they will get to see it.
Kintobs is a work in progress because there are a lot to do; we know that it is a dynamic world, so we are up for the challenge. We are moving, we are trying as much as possible to make sure that we foresee what is happening, and quickly tag into it so that at every point in time, we want to be ahead of what is happening now and we thank God for that.
KINTOBS CHALLENGES OVER THE PAST 10 YEARS
One major challenge of school business is the issue of school bus, it’s one that is not our core business, but we can’t avoid it, we started at Jakande Estate, so relocating from there to our present location has been a huge challenge for us.
We came in with 67 children, this was possible because we made the school bus available, we have a centralize place where we pick up our pupils, while we pick others from home.
Our road is bad, which brings great financial burden, especially in vehicle maintenance, It is one aspect that is really affecting us, sometimes, our children come in late not because they left home late, but due to vehicle delay, which we are working on improving so as to cushion the effect.
Another challenge is getting funding, accessing loans from banks is not something that comes easy, we do really need the support from government which we are not really getting and it another major challenge.
As much as we want to pay our staffs, we can’t do beyond our limit, we want to ensure teachers put a lot of effort, doing a lot of work, churning out children that are so sound, but at the end of the day when you think of what they take home at times you will wonder how they do survive, with the transportation and rent they pay, we always want to do more so their ‘take home’ can really take them home. So funding is one big challenge in the education system.
KINTOBS IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE
We are looking forward to that, in the nearest future, we want to make sure that we attract very good student, people that really appreciate the quality of what we are doing, with that we are able to churn out children that have very excellent result, and by the time we do this without malpractices, the school will grow, we want to be everywhere.
One of our focus is to ensure that even if our children goes out in the nearest future for jobs, everyone that sees them will be proud of them, we want to see kintobs outlive every one of us that has had a reason to bring it up, these are our inspiration, and we are working hard to achieve it, contribute our own quota so that Nigeria can be great for us all, the Kintobs founder concluded.
At Kintobs, apart from academics, children are taught values; the learning of honesty, respect, self-reliance, self-discipline and moderation, the values of being dependable, loving, sensitive to others, kindness, giving, friendliness and fairness are all inculcated in the pupils.
The school also engage parents in the learning process of her pupils, as they continue to lay a solid foundation for Nigeria future leaders.