For 25 cents a day, poor Nigerians get a shot at science education – The Peninsula

  • Date: 22-Mar-2022
  • Source: The Peninsula Qatar
  • Sector:Education
  • Country:Middle East
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For 25 cents a day, poor Nigerians get a shot at science education – The Peninsula

ABUJA: A Nigerian school is targeting students from poor families to give them a chance to excel at science, maths and engineering for a fee of 100 naira (25 cents) a day, hoping they can hone skills to help their families escape poverty.

One student, 12-year-old Faridat Bakare who enrolled at Knosk Secondary School in Abuja in 2020, a year after it opened, has set her sights on becoming an engineer.

In a technical laboratory at the school, she shows off a prototype for a solar-powered car made from cardboard, which she developed with her classmates.

"I want to become an electrical engineer who works with robots and solar panels and all the connections of all the snap circuits and ... things like that," said Bakare, who lives with her mother and four siblings in a poor neighbourhood in Abuja.

Knosk School runs largely on donations and school officials visit each family to establish that they have no capacity to pay full fees, which would work out at 66,000 ($159) naira a term.

The school currently has 82 pupils but is expanding each year.

Irene Bangwell, founder of Knosk, said the idea of a science-oriented high school for poor children came to her eight years ago