Sophia Irozuru

My school is the best!

So says 11-year-old Sophia Irozuru, who’s been a Bridge pupil for four years now. She’s keen to share her experience.

She lives with her parents and two younger sister—Serena and Sarah. They all help their parents with chores at home like washing plates, sweeping and cooking meals. There’s plenty of time for fun as well; Sophia is fond of playing games with her sisters or reading a book.

Sophia walks thirty minutes to school each day with a smile and excitement about what she’ll learn when she arrives. Her favourite thing about her school is the teachers, who encourage her to ask questions if she doesn’t understand. Sophia also praises the electronic reading programme, one of the things that she feels makes Bridge different from other schools. Her enjoyment has led Sophia to become a Bridge ambassador, with the important responsibility of introducing new pupils to the class.  

When asked about her favourite subjects, Sophia has a practical approach. She finds maths and science interesting but also values those subject because, she says: “without them, you can’t do any job.” She hopes to be a scientist in the future and already has some ideas about what she is going to invent . . . a flying skateboard being one of them!

In 2017, Sophia participated in an initiative aimed at teaching girls in Lagos the programming language Python. At the end of her course, Sophia was asked to address a Nigerian gathering of Python developers and tell them about her experience of learning the language—you can watch this below—she asked the audience to imagine a world without computers:

For Sophia, her experience at Bridge has changed how she sees learning for good. “The teaching is different from other schools; which makes the learning different,” she explains, “the way they do the subjects, putting goals and using strive points . . . it’s made me understand things I never thought I would.”