
The Ife Primary Education Research Project (1970-1983).
aka
The Ife 6-Year Primary Project.


This was bolstered by the observation that “of all the continents and peoples of the world, it is only in Africa…
So, Yoruba was to be used & tested as an exclusive medium of passing information or instructions to a set of pupils.
(a). the child will benefit culturally, socially, linguistically & cognitively.
(b). the child’s command of English will be improved if he is taught English as an entirely separate subject by a specialist teacher through the 6 years.
A total of 183 textbooks were produced: teachers’ books, pupils’ books, workbooks in Yoruba, plus several supplementary readers in Yoruba & English.
A number of schools in Ile Ife & environs were specifically chosen and prepared as centers for the project.

There were two groups of pupils. An experimental group, & a control group.
The experimental group was taught ALL subjects in Yoruba except English, which was taught from year 1 to 6 as a 2nd language.
Pupils of the experimental schools (taught in Yoruba) performed better than the control group in all school subjects at the end of primary school education.
Many of them went on to become scholars and successful professionals.
The national drop out rate in 1980 ranged between 40 and 60%.
Unfortunately many things were going on simultaneously at the national level that made the adoption of the project recommendations impossible.
And although the 1977 National Policy on Education included this, there was precious little will to push it through to implementation stage.
The then VC of the University of Ife, the late Prof. H Oluwasanmi took personal interest & generously approved the deployment of university staff to the project.
The old Western State Ministry of Education (before the Balkanization into smaller states) also contributed by giving access to its schools and making teachers available.
A team led by the late Prof. E. A. Yoloye from the University of Ibadan Center For Educational Evaluation was appointed external evaluators to the project.
He had the distinction of being Nigeria’s first professor of Education.
Many of the other members of the heroic research team have also since died.

It is shared via screen shots from his Foreword.
*apologies for the small print. Please enlarge manually.

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