Since a tree cannot make a forest, joint efforts of brainstorming by talented individuals with a team-spirit is required for nation-building.

In the light of this knowledge, teamwork education has become a necessary tool to inculcate in a child the spirit of unity, sense of belonging, tolerance and respect for other people’s skills, knowledge and ideas.

This will go a long way to boost growth and development in the country if further encouraged, as experts are currently working on a curriculum that would impact the knowledge of teamwork education in children from primary school level.

Recently, a book publishing outfit, Macmillan publishers organised a Team Success Competition (TSC)  for primary schools in Oyo State. The programme was designed to promote teamwork among children. The competition drew about  73 primary schools from the whole of Oyo State, and at the end of it all, Royal Diadem School, Ibadan, which was represented by Delano Omobolade and Oladimeji Ishola emerged the overall best school in the competition.

The duo spoke with Rising Stars about the competition and how they came first. According to them, the competition was based on Mathematics, English and General Knowledge. Omobolade is good in Mathematics while his colleague, Ishola has good knowledge of English.

“It was a brainstorming competition that lasted for two hours, and by the time we presented our answers to all the questions on the subjects, we had the best result among the 73 schools that attended the competition.

“Our secret is that, we understand each other and the trust we have for ourselves made things easy for us. Moreover, we read together so we also share ideas and knowledge together. We found most of the questions very simple because our primary 5 syllabus covers all the primary 6 and part of the junior secondary school syllabus,

“We were excited when we saw many other schools coming for the same competition. We want to thank our class teacher, Mr. Ijeh Victor and the Proprietress of the school, Mrs. Modupe Akinsola, for the quality of education they have given us which allowed us compete with other schools comfortably.

“We were very happy that we won the star prize of a medium generator for our school, while we both went home with many educational materials. The event was a memorable day for us. We want more of it to come.

“Moreso, Macmillan publishers is a good company to identify with,” the pupils told Rising Stars.

The Proprietress of the school, Mrs Modupe Akintola commended the organisers of the programme, saying that, the competition would promote unity among the other schools in the state and it would also serve as challenge for other schools to prepare their students for subsequent competitions.

According to her, “Royal Diadem School started about two years ago with a vision to resuscitate some of the lost values in education, which include discipline.

Academic indiscipline is one of the major factors that distabilises education in the country. Discipline goes a long way to make a child  very sound  in life. We inculcate discipline in children in all aspects of education.  We also employ disciplined teachers, who are ready to teach and learn on the job and to use their innate teaching ability to help children discover themselves.”

Mrs. Akintola commended Macmillan, the organisers of the programme, as she enjoined every school in the state to take competition as part of their schools academic programme.