Finding the right schools for your children can be very daunting. For Okonkwo, a financial expert, the hack was to build a school when she found herself struggling to find the right match for her children. In this interview with Samira Bello of BusinessDay, Okonkwo shares how a journey in 2018 led to being nominated as the World’s Best School in 2025.

What sparked KEY, and when did you know you had to build a school?

KEY started with a very personal problem. I was a mum looking for a school for my children in Lagos in 2018, and I was struggling to find one that brought together everything I believed a good education should offer. I wanted strong academic foundations, absolutely. But I also wanted my children to be curious, independent, creative, confident thinkers. Children who could question things, solve problems, work with others and actually do something with what they were learning.
And I couldn’t understand why these things were so often treated as competing priorities.
Before education, I’d worked in finance, including at J.P. Morgan in London. Starting a school certainly wasn’t part of some carefully mapped-out career plan. But the more I researched education, spoke to educators and explored different models around the world, the more convinced I became that we could do things differently.
Eventually, the question changed from “Where can I find this school?” to “Why can’t I build it?”
So I did. In 2019, KEY Academy opened with six children. Two of them were mine. We were operating out of a borrowed classroom in another school, with a vision that was considerably bigger than our resources. Looking back, I don’t think I fully appreciated what I was getting myself into. But I knew why I was doing it, and that conviction has carried me through a lot.

Would you say becoming a parent was the catalyst for the idea?
I don’t think there was one defining moment. Becoming a parent certainly changed how I thought about education, though.
Suddenly, these weren’t abstract questions about curriculum or teaching methods. I was thinking about the experience my children would have every single day. Would they love learning? Would they feel comfortable asking questions? Would they be allowed to make mistakes? Would school help them discover what they were capable of, or simply teach them how to pass examinations?
My own upbringing also shaped my thinking. I grew up in London, and although I always knew I was Nigerian, there were aspects of our history, culture and traditions that weren’t particularly present in my education.

I want our children to be prepared for the world, but I also want them to understand where they come from. Their history, their languages, their culture, their identity.
Being future-ready shouldn’t mean being disconnected from your roots.
So I suppose KEY grew out of a combination of things: motherhood, my own experiences, a growing fascination with education and, perhaps most importantly, a refusal to accept that the way things had always been done was necessarily the best way to do them.

What did people say when you told them what you wanted to build?
I think there was a healthy mixture of excitement, curiosity and probably a few people wondering whether I had completely lost my mind.
I left a career in finance to build a school in Lagos that would approach teaching and learning quite differently. And I wasn’t an educator by training. So I can understand the scepticism.
But what I found interesting was that even people who weren’t entirely convinced by the model could relate to the problem we were trying to solve.
Parents wanted more for their children. Educators were interested in different approaches. And there were people who believed in the vision long before there was much physical evidence that we could pull it off. I will never forget sending what felt like a million emails to organisations asking them to support this school that, at the time, was little more than a presentation and a dream. One of those emails reached the then CEO of BIC, Gonzalve Bich, who responded and connected me with his team. BIC subsequently donated an extraordinary amount of learning resources to KEY.
That experience taught me something I have carried with me ever since: sometimes you simply have to ask. And sometimes, wonderfully, people say yes.

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In your own words, what does it mean to teach children to think instead of cram?
I think we have created a rather strange situation in education where a child can be considered academically successful because they can reproduce information in an examination, but may struggle to explain what that information actually means or how to use it.
I am not suggesting that knowledge is unimportant. Quite the opposite. Children need strong foundations in literacy, numeracy, science and the wider curriculum. Academic rigour matters enormously to us at KEY. But knowing something and knowing what to do with that knowledge are two very different things.
We want children to ask questions. To challenge assumptions. To make connections between subjects. To investigate problems, test ideas, disagree respectfully, fail, rethink and try again.
And yes, we assess them. We benchmark academic progress. We care deeply about mastery.
I simply don’t believe we should have to choose between children who perform academically and children who can think independently.
The world our children are growing into is changing at an extraordinary pace. We cannot possibly teach them everything they will need to know throughout their lives. But we can equip them with the ability and confidence to keep learning.

What does a day in a KEY classroom look like that a parent wouldn’t see elsewhere?
The first thing you might notice is that our classrooms don’t always look or sound like what people traditionally associate with “serious” academic learning.
There is movement. Conversation. Children working together. Sometimes quite a lot of noise!
You might walk into one learning space and find children designing something, conducting an experiment or debating a question. Elsewhere, children might be reading, writing, working through mathematics or receiving focused support from an educator. And all of these things can be happening as part of the same learning experience.
One of the biggest misconceptions about project-based learning is that projects are the fun activities children do after the serious academic work has finished.
That’s not how we approach it. Projects provide meaningful contexts for children to acquire, connect and apply knowledge across different subjects. The academic learning is intentional, and our educators work incredibly hard to ensure that children are developing the knowledge and skills they need.
We call our educators co-learners, and that choice of language is very deliberate. We don’t see them as the “sage on the stage,” standing at the front of a classroom dispensing all the answers. They guide, mentor, challenge and support our children, but they also learn alongside them. Sometimes a child asks a question that the co-learner doesn’t know the answer to, and that’s absolutely fine. They investigate it together. The term is also a constant reminder to our educators that learning never stops. You haven’t “arrived” simply because you are the adult in the room. And I think there’s something incredibly powerful about children seeing the adults they look up to being curious, asking questions and modelling what it means to be a lifelong learner.

What do you hope a child carries with them long after they’ve left KEY?
Confidence. Not the kind that comes from always getting things right, but the confidence to try, to question, to make mistakes and to know that they have the ability to figure things out.
I want our children to leave KEY with excellent academic foundations, of course. But I also want them to be curious, thoughtful, compassionate people who can work with others, think independently and approach unfamiliar challenges without immediately looking for someone to give them the answer.
I want them to understand who they are and where they come from. To feel deeply connected to their culture and identity, while being open to learning from people and perspectives very different from their own. And perhaps most importantly, I want them to believe that they have agency.

What do you think Nigerian education gets right that doesn’t get enough credit?
I don’t think we talk nearly enough about the extraordinary people working in education across Nigeria, often in incredibly challenging circumstances. I have met teachers and school leaders who are doing remarkable things with limited resources. People who are deeply committed to their students, constantly finding creative ways around obstacles and investing far more of themselves in their work than anyone could reasonably expect. And there’s an enormous appetite to learn.
Earlier this year, KEY partnered with Happy2Host, Google for Education and Vernovi Cyber on a professional learning summit in Lagos. More than 1,000 educators applied for just 120 places. Think about that for a moment. Over a thousand educators voluntarily put themselves forward because they wanted to learn, grow and become better at what they do.
That says something important about the people working in our education system.
We often look abroad for inspiration, and I think there’s tremendous value in learning from other countries. I do it constantly. But we also need to recognise the expertise, creativity and innovation that already exist here. Nigeria has incredible educators. We need to invest in them, support them and create more opportunities for their work to flourish.

How do you bring parents along when they are used to grades and rankings?
I think it’s important to recognise that parents’ concerns are entirely legitimate. They want their children to do well academically. They want to know they’re progressing and that their future opportunities aren’t being compromised. I understand that completely. I am a parent too. So our approach has never been to tell parents that academic results don’t matter. They absolutely do.
Instead, we work to help parents see the wider picture of their children’s learning. We share their work, explain the academic objectives behind projects, discuss individual progress and create opportunities for families to experience what the children are doing. And importantly, we still assess academic progress. We benchmark learning and identify areas where children need additional support.

What did being nominated for World’s Best School mean for the team and the children?
To be shortlisted among the world’s most innovative schools just six years into our journey was something I don’t think any of us fully anticipated. Building KEY has been anything but straightforward. We have questioned ourselves, made mistakes, changed things, rebuilt things and spent countless hours trying to work out how to translate a fairly ambitious educational vision into something that actually works for children. So to have that work recognised internationally meant an enormous amount.
But what made it particularly special was the response from our community. The support we received from parents, educators, friends, organisations and people across Nigeria was extraordinary. My mum’s WhatsApp forwarding operation alone probably deserves its own award!
For our team, I think it was a moment to appreciate just how far we’d come. And for our children, there was something wonderful about seeing their school, here in Lagos, being recognised on a global stage. It was also a reminder that innovation in education doesn’t have to come from somewhere else. We can build remarkable things here in Nigeria. And the world can learn from us too.

What’s a moment with a student that stays with you?
It’s difficult to choose one moment because, for me, some of the most meaningful things that happen at KEY are the small moments that probably wouldn’t make it into a school brochure.
A child who has been struggling with something for days suddenly figures it out. A student who was once reluctant to speak in front of others confidently presents an idea to an entire room. Or a child who asks a question that completely changes the direction of a conversation.
I love those moments. Because you can almost see something shifting. A child begins to trust their own thinking. They realise that they don’t need to get everything right the first time. They discover that their ideas have value.
And sometimes, the children teach us things too. They challenge our assumptions and ask questions that force us to think differently.

What did that visibility change for KEY?
It opened doors, certainly. But perhaps more importantly, it gave us a bigger platform to participate in conversations about what education could look like, both in Nigeria and internationally.
We’ve had opportunities to connect with educators, organisations and school leaders who are asking similar questions, experimenting with different approaches and trying to solve some of the same challenges. And those relationships have been incredibly valuable. One thing I’ve learnt is that building a better education system cannot be the work of individual schools operating in isolation. We need to collaborate, share what we’re learning, challenge one another and support good ideas wherever they’re emerging.
KEY was never intended to be simply one good school in Lagos. Our ambition has always been to contribute to something much bigger.
Our annual ChessMasters tournament is one way we have tried to take that thinking beyond our classrooms, bringing schools together around the 21st century skills chess helps children develop. So while the recognition was wonderful, what excites me most is what it might allow us to do next.

What does building a school in Nigeria feel like day to day?
I think people sometimes imagine that running a school is primarily about curriculum, classrooms and children. And of course those things are central to everything we do.
But building a school also means dealing with infrastructure, recruitment, finance, regulation, facilities, technology, operations, parent relationships and about a hundred other things that need your attention before you’ve even finished your morning coffee. Nigeria adds its own particular complexities to that equation.
You learn to be resourceful. You learn to adapt. You learn that a beautifully thought-out plan can meet reality and require an almost immediate rethink.
But there’s also something incredibly rewarding about building here. We have so much talent, creativity and potential. And when you bring together people who genuinely believe in what they’re trying to achieve, extraordinary things can happen.

Who has supported or inspired you most along the way?
My family, first and foremost. My children are the reason this journey began, and they’ve grown up alongside KEY. My family has experienced the highs, the lows and everything in between.
Then there are the parents who believed in us when we had very little to show beyond a vision. Some entrusted us with their children when we were just getting started. Others have opened doors, introduced us to people, supported initiatives and advocated for KEY in rooms we weren’t even in.
I’ll never take that for granted. And my team. I cannot overstate how much of what we’ve achieved has been made possible by the extraordinary educators and colleagues who have committed themselves to this work.

Where would you love to see KEY academy in five years?
I’d love to see KEY academy continue developing into a really compelling example of what education can look like when academic excellence and future-ready learning are treated as equally important. But I also want our impact to extend far beyond our own classrooms. I’ve said this many times: KEY was never intended to be just one school.
We have an enormous opportunity to share what we’re learning, support educators, collaborate with other institutions and contribute to the wider transformation of education in Nigeria. Through ImpactEducators, our nationwide teacher-training initiative, we want to make high-quality professional learning and innovative teaching practices accessible to educators well beyond KEY. And through ChessMasters, our annual inter-school chess tournament, we want to keep creating opportunities for children across different schools to develop and demonstrate 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, resilience and independent decision-making. These initiatives are different expressions of the same belief: the impact of what we build should extend beyond our own students.
And I want us to continue engaging in education policy. Because meaningful change cannot happen only within the walls of individual schools. We need systems that recognise, support and encourage different approaches to learning.

In five years, I’d love for people to look at KEY not simply as a school doing interesting things, but as an institution that has helped other educators and schools imagine what might be possible.
That would mean a great deal to me.