Meadowhall Branches Out Into 5 Subsidiaries To Set New Standards In Education Services Provision

By Eric Eghaghe

Leading indigenous education and total child development services provider, Meadow Hall Group has announced that entrepreneurs and non-governmental organizations within and outside Nigeria with a passion for total development of children can now leverage on the Meadow Hall experience and cutting edge resources to create opportunities for holistic development of Nigerian children across the socio-economic divide.

At a recent media parley to announce the activities of the Meadow Hall Group and its subsidiaries, Chief Executive Officer, Mrs. Kehinde Nwani, said her organisation’s passionate belief that all Nigerian children should have access to world class opportunities for all-round development informed the establishment of the five subsidiaries under the group. They are: Meadow Hall Education being the flagship of the organization, Meadow Hall Consult, Meadow Hall Foundation, Spring Meadow Edutainment and Meadow Hall Branchise.

Mrs. Nwani described the survival and evolution of Meadow Hall as a story of resilience, passion, purpose and patriotism. She noted that though Meadow Hall started out in 2002 as an infant/junior School in the Lekki area of Lagos, the brand has today grown into a multi-competency business owing to its commitment to creating an enduring dynamic platform for enhancing the potential of the Nigerian child.

She said Meadow Hall Education focuses on the cognitive development of children and equipping them with 21st century skills, which would make them relevant in the 21st century workplace. The school comprises of infant and junior schools in the Lekki and Ikoyi environs, as well as a college situated on its Lekki campus.

The Meadow Hall Consult is the educational consulting arm of the Group which offers consultancy services designed to enhance teachers’ skills levels and promote classroom productivity through its various continuous development courses. To date, the Meadow Hall Consult has trained nearly 4,000 teachers drawn mostly from public schools on the platforms of partnership ventures such as: Eko Project, Edu Camp, InnerCity Mission School and SOS Children’s Villages Nigeria. Meadow Hall Consult is also involved in training leaders in education on managing and leading their various schools effectively through its Leadership Academy as well as running a FINISHING school for teachers, thereby making them into well rounded individuals qualified to raise well rounded children.

Meadow Hall Foundation, as the non-profit arm of the Group is established to support communities, public schools and the less privileged through various charitable interventions and programmes such as adoption programmes, mentoring and scholarship programmes, among others. Meadow Hall Foundation recently adopted Ilasan Primary school, Lekki as the pilot school under the School Adoption Program to improve her educational standards. It also trains fresh graduates who are passionate about the education sector in international best practices for 3 months at no cost at all to the trainees through its Graduate Trainee Programme.

Spring Meadow Edutainment Company (SME), she explained, was set up to inspire and nurture creativity in children through specially designed programmes that provide opportunities for fun, entertainment and learning in non-cognitive areas while the Meadow Hall Branchise is a platform to partner with other entrepreneurs with a passion for children to replicate the Spring Meadow Edutainment Company offerings in several locations across the country and beyond through its franchise scheme.

The Meadow Hall CEO said the Spring Meadow Edutainment offerings have been deliberately broken down into nine independent centres that individually cater to different needs of total child development. These centres include STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Centre, SEN (Special Education Needs) Centre, Music Academy, Language School, Book Café, Art Centre and Fitness Centre, among others. Interested individuals looking for investment opportunities she added, could partner with the Group through the Meadow Hall Branchise platform to establish any or all of the independent centres in any location of their choice.

“Spring Meadow Edutainment’s offerings are not necessarily tied to the school environment or our Meadow Hall Education extracurricular activities. They are programmes that children and youths from diverse academic backgrounds from junior to tertiary levels can benefit from.

Also, a partner coming to us on the platform of the Meadow Hall Branchise can decide to run one or more of the centres in different locations depending on the perceived needs of the children in the identified location. Meadow Hall Branchise ensures quality standardization in line with the Meadow Hall template so that, regardless of where the Spring Meadow Edutainment offering is being offered, the standards remain top notch”, she explained.

As the tag line of the Branchise suggests, it is creating opportunities in two ways- one, by spreading best practices and giving the ‘Nigerian child’ an opportunity to be part of these creative centres , secondly it is creating investment opportunities for individuals with entrepreneurial ambitions.

Mrs. Nwani further noted that the country needs to encourage more and more social entrepreneurs to take up the challenge of playing decisive roles in the task of revamping the decaying social infrastructure as they find solutions to some of society’s problems such as unemployment.

“Drawing from our experience of the evolution of the Meadow Hall brand from inception to date, we are convinced that the country still has a long way to go in achieving basic globally accepted standards as far as social infrastructure is concerned. The needs are really massive and government at various levels in the country must do more to encourage social entrepreneurs, if the goal of holistic development of the country is to be achieved”, Mrs. Nwani counseled.

Continuing, she said: “Take the Education Sector for example. In order to achieve the goal of raising the standard and quality of education, there is a need for creative and innovative support to public educational institutions especially in the areas of teaching staff skills enhancement, advisory on standard operating procedures and curriculum development as well as leadership training for pupils, among others. A massive investment is required to achieve world class standards in the areas highlighted above and government alone cannot undertake the job successfully”.

“Meadow Hall is an idea that is solely about holistic development of the Nigerian child as a member of a dynamic global family. This idea is being managed in a way that will ensure it remains relevant to generations of Nigerian children, even those yet to be born. The more we are able to replicate the idea across the country and even outside the country on a long term basis, the more satisfying it is for us as the promoter and initiator of the idea”, she revealed.