By Abayomi Elias
In closing the marketing gaps for schools abroad who are seeking to admitting international students from Nigeria and other African countries ,SCHOOLIPLY, a profit making organisation has shouldered the responsibility, connected over 20,000 students with schools in diaspora since August 2022.
Newsconnect reports that Some schools abroad don’t have budget for marketing. For instance a school in United States can’t travel all the way to Nigeria to come and meet these students.
Schooliply in its wisdom since the inception of the organisation barely two year connect students and schools and in return they get money for the marketing service from the school and not the students.
In an interview with this medium and the CEO of Schooliply Tunde Omotoye, said;
“We have been able to device a partnership while we work with schools directly and help them bring these students free of charge for the students.
“In return, the schools give us some sorts of money. How we do that is marketing. Some schools abroad don’t have budget for marketing.
“A school in US can’t travel all the way to Nigeria to come and meet these students. So we do that on their behalf and in return we get those money.
“Some agents get money from the student and they get money from the school. But because we have been in their shoes before, so we will rather let them save that money for something else
“Schooliply is almost two years, we launched it 1st of August 2022 and since then we have actually empowered over 20,000 students. If at this point Schooliply stops working, I think we have fulfilled our part of helping many students to school abroad. We are presently working with 68 schools abroad.
“We have also signed a partnership last year with another company like ours who have access to 1000 schools abroad. By the ending of March 2024, Schooliply would have over 1000 abroad schools partnerships.
Newsconnect correspondence said as it seems, every sector of Nigerian economy is faced with the ‘JAPA’ syndrome and it appears Schooliply with its intervention is encouraging it.
Omotoye in his reaction to that said
“Schooliply is not encouraging JAPA, we are encouraging Legal Migration in a way. Where you save yourself money, from scam, from fraudulent agents that are milking people here.
“I do not push for JAPA, I push for legal migration. We are not enabling JAPA for all,we are enabling legal migration.
“Go to schooliply.com, and check.
“We ensure you do not necessarily need to break the bank to study abroad, there are scholarship opportunities that you can access. If you graduate with good grades, 1st class and second class upper, there are scholarship opportunities.
“Do your research, do not take everything you hear word for word, research, read and validate it before taking any action or steps”.
The Keynote Speaker talked about transforming education in Africa through technology.
In an interview at the event said;
“Basically what I have shared with everyone is a lead from Nelson Mandela who said Education is the greatest weapon by which you can change the world. We do agree with that and my posit really is that in transforming our education in Africa, we need to move away from the style of assessment we do right now which is summative assessment to a formative assessment.
“Which implies we assess people and learners as they go. This is not to say the summative process that we practice here is bad, but we need a hybrid of both.
“Technology removes the borders. You don’t have to be in the four walls of classroom to learn. During COVID period, students couldn’t learn. We need to incorporate technology so that those kinds of things do not happen”. He said .
Prince Gideon Olanrewaju from the Aid For Rural Education Access Initiative (AREA I) said it will be difficult to close the gap to access to quality education between the poor and the rich of social stratification still exists.
Can the Gap between the poor and rich be closed with regards to access to Education ?
“The answer will be NO, obviously. This is because the cycle of economic prosperity in the country continues to become widened. We can see Naira inflation for example or the dollarisation is causing more people to move from even from the middle class to lower class.
“There will always be that cycle of poverty being continuously recycled. If we will ever close that gap permanently, there is a need for us to Invest, and economically empower every member of the citizens.
“When you close the gaps of the classes, Upper class, Middle class and lower class often referred to as Social stratification. As Iong as it exists, the gap can’t be entirely closed”.
Gideon said