The Federal Government has made a commitment to ensure no fewer than 15 million children currently out of school, return to the classrooms for learning by the year 2027.
Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman made the disclosure on Thursday in Abuja while briefing newsmen on activities and strategies put in motion to revamp the nation’s education sector, with a focus on the fifth priority of President Bola Tinubu’s eight point priority, inclusivity: Drawing on all Skills.
While noting that within the short time that has spent impressive gains had been made to move the sector forward, Mamman explained that high premium has been placed on foundational and basic education, strengthening integration of existing non-formal schools into formal education systems, scaling-up adult literacy and non-formal education interventions, increasing opportunities for girl-child education and forging partnerships with all tiers of government as well as development partners.
He said: “It is an embarrassment that Nigeria is continually associated with the highest number of Out of School children in the world.
“We would be paying particular attention to this unacceptable phenomenon and in line with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s commitment, would work towards returning 15million Out of School Children back to the classrooms by the year 2027.
“A National Basic Education in Nigeria Bootcamp (BEN-B) Summit held in September, 2023 to re-invigorate our focus on basic education including ensuring the harmonization and coordination resources and activities amongst all tiers of government and development partners. This was succeeded by a National Conference on Learning Crisis in Nigeria which has resulted in a framework of action to address identified challenges and bottlenecks to foundational learning in Nigeria.
“A National Policy on Senior Secondary and Re-Entry Guidelines for Adolescent Girls who dropped out of school prematurely has also been developed and adopted by the National Council on Education. These two policies would considerably advance our interventions for returning more Nigerian Children back to School.
“We have, therefore, began operationalizing the establishment of the National Commission for Almajiri and Out of School Children, approved a policy on Early Child Care Development Education (ECCDE) and commenced engagement with State Governments on removing bottlenecks that negatively impacted on their ability to optimally utilize the Universal basic Education funds.
“The partnership compact we would be entering into with states and our development partners will focus on: A commitment to improve governance accountability, coordination and relentless focus on results at all levels; Federal and State Governments commit to increasing public financing as well as transparent and timely release of funds;
“State Government fulfill jointly agreed Counterpart obligations on efficient programme execution and achievement of results; and Funding from Federal Government and Development Partners to the States should be performance-based and disbursed on achievement of agreed results on policy reforms and service delivery outputs/outcomes.”
The minister further noted that with a view to address what he described as epileptic delivery of academic activities in tertiary institutions, engagements were ongoing with the several education based unions to build trust and as such, the following resolutions have been reached.
“35% increase in salaries of workers in our tertiary institutions; 4 months payment of salaries for the 8 months they were on strike in 2022; Removal from the Integrated Payment and Payroll Information System; and Granting autonomy for recruitment.
“The Federal of Education would work with the Honourable Minister of Finance/Coordinating Minister of the Economy and Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation to ensure a seamless implementation of the above issues.”
Mamman also hinted on ongoing moves to totally eliminate sexual harassment in tertiary institutions, reduce the occurrence of all form of vices in schools, safety and security of schools, exploring innovative teaching materials and Integration of digital digital tools into technical education as well as establishment of a National Education, Research and database (NERD) System for the “historical digitization of all academic and education outputs ever generated in the history of Nigeria starting from 1932 when the first polytechnic was established and 1948 when the first university was established.
“Under the NERDS, the nation will literally go back in time to preserve her historical knowledge, mainstream live digitization for extant education documents as well as set up a credential verification system for the validation of all education-related credentials.”
The minister also revealed ongoing discussions with the Nigerian Mid- Stream and Downstream and Regulatory Agency (NMDRA), on finding lasting solutions to the power issues in our Tertiary institutions including the use of Compressed Natural Gas.(CNG), even as he added that digital resources centres have been set up through the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), for the development of electronic digital content for basic education delivery in the 37 Smart Schools and 111 effective other schools.
