YOUNG MATH whizz who excelled at A-level in the subject last year has now been accepted to pursue a university course.
Speaking exclusively to The Voice last year, the two proud parents of Esther Okade, from Walsall, West Midlands, shared their joy when their daughter passed the exam – usually sat by 18-year-olds – with an incredible B grade.
But that was just the start of the young prodigy’s journey. Esther has now been accepted by the Open University.
The tedious process required the 10-year-old to complete a university level entrance exam, which she passed with a perfect 100 per cent, write an essay detailing why the bright star wanted to attend and, finally, a sit-down interview with three members of the admissions board and the vice-chancellor.
“They saw how much she wanted this for herself and knew she wasn’t being pushed or pressured by anyone else,” her mother Omonefe Okade told The Voice.
Mrs Okade, an engineer and math expert, is the secret weapon to developing her daughter’s remarkable talent. She is convinced that her decision to home school both her children is what changed the course of their lives for the better.
After originally enrolling Esther in private school, the mum-of-two recalled that her daughter became disengaged.
LEARNING TOGETHER: Esther Okade with her mother, Efe, and brother Isaiah
“If I kept pushing her to go there it would have ended with her being an extremely unhappy child,” she reasoned. “When a child is in an unhappy environment, they begin to act out and then they stop engaging and end up being branded difficult.”
Making Esther happy, Mrs Okade realised, was key to her daughter’s advancement, as well as recognising that “all children are different”.
So she began developing a teaching method that was tailored specifically to each of her children’s individual needs.
For Esther, she learned well with the use of patterns, while her son Isaiah, 6, enjoyed learning with the use of pictures, the proud mother shared.
“My heart breaks when I see a child written off,” said the Nigerian-born educator, a circumstance she has found to be the biggest detractor of traditional education.
In a system where teaching methods are dictated by aptitude testing, Mrs Okade warned that results did more harm than good.
She explained: “When you do that you psychologically mess that child up. You give them a label and limit them if they’re not in the top performing set. You find it with a lot of black boys in education. I have seen what they have done and are still doing to our young black boys; many of them are already destroyed and [teachers] give up on them before they’ve even had the opportunity to progress.”
Raising a son of her own, the math coach remains sceptical whether her six-year-old would have had half the chances afforded to him by her technique versus being in traditional full-time education.
Following in his big sister’s footsteps, Isaiah is doing advanced calculus and preparing to sit his GCSE is math this year.
Recalling her own education in Nigeria where she was regarded as a late developer, the certified engineer added: “Imagine if someone placed a barrier before me and limited what I was capable of? I certainly wouldn’t be where I am today.”- Voice
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