Keep Educating Yourself (KEY) academy in Lagos, Nigeria, has been named among the top 10 schools in the World’s Best School Prize for Innovation for 2025.
Founded by T4 Education in the wake of Covid in 2022 to share the best practices of schools that are changing lives in their classrooms and far beyond their walls, the World’s Best School Prizes are the world’s most prestigious education prizes.
The prize covers Community Collaboration, Environmental Action, Innovation, Overcoming Adversity, and Supporting Healthy Lives.
It was established to give a platform to schools changing lives in their classrooms and far beyond their walls, sharing their best practices to help improve education everywhere.
Vikas Pota, founder of T4 Education and the World’s Best School Prize, lauded KEY Academy for revolutionising education through its project-based learning model, equipping students with the critical thinking, creativity, and 21st-century problem-solving skills they need to thrive in a rapidly changing world.
Pota said that in a world being turned upside down by AI, amid growing challenges of climate change, conflict, poverty and populism, only good education, with humans at its heart, will restore hope to learners.
Congratulating KEY academy on becoming a finalist for the World’s Best School Prizes 2025, Pota said that leaders and schools around the world have so much to learn from such an inspirational Nigerian institution.
KEY Academy, an independent primary and secondary school in Lagos, was established in 2018 to refine a structured project-based learning framework, adapted to suit Nigeria’s culture and context.
The drive for this learning approach is to make education accessible, transformative and a balance between creative exploration and academic rigour.
Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children globally. Those in school often lack engaging, relevant learning experiences that equip them to achieve in everyday life. Driven by the belief that simply getting children into classrooms won’t solve the problem, but rather the fundamental way they learn must change,
Teachers acting as facilitators guide students through inquiry-driven projects rather than delivering one-way instruction, and learners take part in projects and collaborate with professionals across varied fields to solve real-world challenges.
Student-led projects include a waste pollution initiative where students worked with a riverside community struggling with water pollution, initiatives to develop solutions that address waste and maximise energy use, exploration of renewable energy solutions, and raising money to support the community through an annual charity project, through which students develop empathy and practical problem-solving skills and contextualised learning.
Parents are part of the process to support learners through workshops, open classrooms, and student showcases where they see the model’s impact firsthand. This builds a culture of shared responsibility and co-learning. Teachers receive ongoing training and have adopted innovative assessment models, replacing memorisation-based tests with competency-based evaluations. The long-term vision is to scale the model through a digital platform to include nationwide teacher training, assessment, and accreditation that can support educators across the country, regardless of the socio-economic status of their school or parent community.
Through their model, 95 per cent of students demonstrate higher-order thinking skills, such as critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving, and 85 per cent show increased confidence in public speaking, collaboration, and leadership. All students engage in real-world problem-solving, and 100 percent of parents have seen noticeable improvements in their children’s curiosity and independence. As a recognised thought leader in progressive education, the school actively engages with academia and international networks to share best practices and drive systemic change. Over 1,000 educators beta-test its digital platform, which codifies the learning approach and materials.
Pota further said the winners of the five World’s Best School Prizes – for Community Collaboration, Environmental Action, Innovation, Overcoming Adversity, and Supporting Healthy Lives will be chosen by an expert Judging Academy based on rigorous criteria.
The winners and finalists of these global schools prizes will be invited to the World Schools Summit in Abu Dhabi, UAE, on November 15-16, where they will share their best practices and unique expertise and experience with policymakers and leading figures in global education.
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