By Etop Ekanem

In a bid to further build upon its impacts, improve its processes, and ensure that head teachers and teachers maintain the highest possible standards in giving their best to pupils, Bridge International Academies during the just concluded mid-term assessment in Lagos deployed technology in marking pupils assessment via the Let’s Mark App.

The Let’s Mark Application is one of the many digital applications that have been introduced by Bridge International Academies to support teachers in the course of their duties and effectively collect pupils’ data.

Speaking on the benefits of the Let’s Mark App works, Foyinsola Akinjayeju, Managing Director of Bridge International Academies in Nigeria, noted: “Using the provided smartphones, teachers scan pupils’ assessments to quickly correct answers and simultaneously record their results.

“Let’s Mark increases the reliability and accuracy of recorded student scores, whilst reducing the administrative time taken to correct assessments manually. The tool works to improve the efficiency of classroom time while giving visibility to learning outcomes to external stakeholders.

“To ensure teachers can use this tool effectively, Bridge International Academies provided induction training to all teaching staff while the app also includes training materials comprising a simulated ‘Assessment Practice’ that allows teachers to practise utilising the application.

“By recording every answer provided by pupils, the application enables significant insights into the performance of individual pupils down to the efficacy of the lessons being received. A joint UNESCO, UNICEF and World Bank report on the State of the Global Education Crisis stated ‘To tackle the learning crisis, countries must first address the learning data crisis”.

“Addressing pupils’ learning levels is a priority to take action on refining effective instruction and accelerating improved learning outcomes.”

Speaking about the Let’s Mark App, Nurudeen Salawudeen, IT Manager at Bridge Nigeria, noted that the app is user-friendly and highly effective, adding: “The application is tailored to improve reliable data collection and ultimately increase the use of data to inform instruction.

“To use the Let’s Mark App, teachers at Bridge International Academies only had to open the application, select the right class and subject to be marked and scan over the bubble sheet which had been filled by pupils during the assessment. Once that is done, the app shows the correct and incorrect answers and stores them against the selected pupil’s details.”

Happy to be using the Let’s Mark Application, a Primary 6 Teacher at a Bridge International Academies school in Alimosho, Joy Ngwu said: “I particularly love the Let’s Mark App because it makes marking and recording very easy for us as Teachers.

“It saves me a lot of time. In previous places I have worked, teachers dread mid-term and end-term examinations because of the stress of marking but here it is a different case because the process has been simplified with the use of technology.”