The Education Partnership (TEP) Centre is a leading education partnership consultancy within Nigeria. The centre works with the private and public sectors to design and implement educational programmes for schools across the country.

In this interview with YNaija’s #Impact365 series, Utibe Henshaw, a researcher with the TEP centre and manager of the organisation’s secondary education programmes, talks about the centre and the impact they have made so far.

Can you give us a brief background about TEP Centre?

The Education Partnership (TEP) Centre is Nigeria’s pioneer education partnership consultancy. Established in March 2013, its aim is to create a more effective partnership mechanisms between and across the public and private sectors in sub-Saharan Africa for delivering quality education.

What exactly does TEP Centre do? Do you also partner with public sector organisations?

TEP Centre specializes in research, design, implementation, support and evaluation of education programmes, projects and initiatives across the public, private and non-profit sectors.

Specifically, TEP Centre and ExpandNet, with support from the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation are working together to improve Girls Secondary Education (GSE) in Nigeria and support Nigerian educationists to systematically scale up successfully tested interventions to benefit more children and to foster educational improvements in a sustainable manner.

TEP Centre is also partnering with public sector organisations including the Federal Ministry of Education, Universal Basic Education (UBEC), State Universal Basic Education Board (Lagos & Kano), Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), National Population Commission (NPC), and various local government education authorities to deliver the recently completed pilot phase of the Citizen-led Household Assessment of Learning, LEARNigeria (Let’s Engage, Assess & Report Nigeria). LEARNigeria is designed to generate data on foundational literacy and numeracy skills that Nigerian children between the ages of 5-15years possess.

Education is a key problem across sub-Saharan Africa. How do you hope to enhance education across Nigeria?

TEP Centre is working to improve accountability in the education sector through our citizen-led household assessment of learning, LEARNigeria (Let’s Engage, Assess & Report Nigeria). LEARNigeria was born out of dissatisfaction with learning outcomes and a corresponding failure of public sector and non-state stakeholders alike to take responsibility for low learning levels in basic education in Nigeria.

TEP Centre believes research and evidence will provide a platform for stakeholders to collaboratively to identify and understand the problem and proffer potential solutions. Also, TEP Centre is championing the discourse on scaling up (expanding) the impact of successfully-tested education interventions to reach more children and become embedded in public sector policy and programmes.

Could you tell us more about the Nigerian education innovation summit?

The Nigerian Education Innovation summit (NEDIS) is an annual event which brings together stakeholders from social investors, funders, researchers, development partners, policymakers and public sector officials to address different challenges and proffer solutions facing Nigeria’s education sector.

The theme for this year’s summit (NEDIS 2016) was Scaling up Educational Interventions in Nigeria: A Call to Action and the main objective was to uncover challenges and solutions for improving access to and quality of education in Nigeria.

So far, has your initiative made any impact with regards to education?

As a result of the NEDIS 2016, an Action Coalition has been established and has received the recognition of the Federal Ministry of Education. The Action Coalition emerged to serve as a platform to sustain the conversation and action around systematically scaling up (expanding) impactful education innovations.

Are you aligned with the Millennium Development Goals? What are your areas of focus?

TEP Centre’s work is aligned with global goals and targets for education including the recently expired Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the current Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The sustainable development goal for education is to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all.”

This goal ensures that all girls and boys complete free primary and secondary schooling by 2030. TEP Centre’s work with scaling up the impact of education innovations and measuring learning outcomes from the education sector is geared towards the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals on education.