Peace Obi
In response to the increasing demand on ICT to meet the varying needs of man, a UK-trained Nigerian technologist, Mr. Yomi Ojo, has launched a free school search portal, ‘Schools Compass’ in Lagos recently.
According to Ojo, the portal is designed to be a pool where students and parents can find useful information to aid their need to either transfer from one school to another within the country or relocate from any part of the world to Nigeria to continue their education at any level.
He said the free search portal was part of his contribution towards the global dependence on technology, adding that it is designed to provide its users with useful information on different schools, their locations and fees of schools of interest in Nigeria.
Apart from making a tedious process of searching for schools a lot easier, the inventor said the website also provides parents with wider range of options to aid quality decision process.
Recalling his experience and the hurdles of locating and deciding on a suitable school for his children in Nigeria after relocating from UK, Ojo said he met parents with similar challenges, who would leave their offices, spend time, money and other resources moving from one school to another in search for the ideal school. “My personal experience and circumstances led to the emergence of Schools Compass.”
Explaining some of the benefits, he said, “it saves time and money and will give them more confidence in their choice of schools because it is chosen from different options.”
He said parents could search and find schools based on their budgets, their preferred locations across Nigerian states and the FCT, adding that it enables parents to compare up to four schools in a tabular form at the same time to clearly understand their value propositions, download schools’ admission forms and contact schools directly on the same platform.
He stressed that the Schools Compass does not replace schools’ websites, but complements individual school websites; it serves as a pool for schools, as well as one-stop point for anyone searching for schools in the country. “Schools Compass complements and simplifies the school websites. This is because more often than not, these sites are too information clustered for parents to understand what the schools have to offer within their short attention span. Schools Compass addresses that issue.”
