PAS Prize Founder and Program Lead, Miss Nina Mbah chatted Obaland Magazine recently about how physical classrooms disrupted due to the Covid-19 pandemic, learning has moved online for the most part of 2020. This comes with so many challenges to ensure good quality learning outcome is maintained for learners across the world.
She explained that PAS Prize started as an Academic Talent Discovery and recognition platform for Secondary School Students since 2016, it has convened over 2,000 outstanding students in English spelling, Science, and Mathematics from about 150 schools in Katsina and the Kaduna States Nigeria through annual Academic Competitions that challenges, discovers, and rewards outstanding students by connecting them to prize donors who have rewarded and supported participants learning efforts and Educational pursuit with various incentives
from scholarships to learning materials and educational support funds.
Miss Mbah revealed that PAS Prize, a recognition and reward platform incentivizing excellence in education launches an online academic competition for discovering and rewarding outstanding students in Science and Mathematics in Nigeria as a way to ensure their mission to promote excellence in education in Nigeria is not short-changed by the numerous covid-19 restrictions.
According to the Founder “The ups and downs of 2020 stopped education for millions of students globally. While several innovations are springing up to bridge these learning gaps to ensure learning continues, education stakeholders must also seek ways to support these numerous and dynamic learning efforts.”
Nina said that 2020 Covid-19 restrictions seemed to pose a heavy challenge on this annual convening that supports some of Nigeria’s brightest minds, PaS Prize launched an online edition to continue its mission of promoting excellence in Nigeria’s education space. PAS Prize 2020 competition was done via an online video streaming platform where student participants were able to interact with the competition jury with results published in real-time.
She added that even though Nigeria still struggles with providing a smooth internet connection, a lot of students still showed determination to participate despite this. The advantage of this online edition was that participation is free and the location is no longer a barrier. Students from across the country are able to participate from anywhere compared to the physical convening which limited students from outside the host state to participate.
Winners of Pas Prize 2020 are:
1st position: Abdulsamad Sulaiman of Umaru Yaro Memorial College Funtua.
2nd position: Abubakar Suleiman of SEED InternationL School Kakuri Kaduna.
3rd position: Abdullahi Raji of SEED International School Kakuri Kaduna.
Prizes received by participants range from cash prizes to internet data bundles donated by Elisha Mamman International, Be Gold Trainers, and Elteej Ventures Nigeria Limited.
“To attain the quality education goal for every child in Nigeria, we must put excellence at the core of education delivery. And because we are what we repeatedly do, we believe excellence is not just an act but a habit. So, we must come together as education stakeholders to build an excellence habit in our education system by supporting the efforts towards excellence and quality education in Nigeria” Mbah concluded.
