The Nigerian Government in partnership with the Plan International-led Consortium, other International and national Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) are working on national guidelines for the Accelerated Basic Education Programme for the country.
The EU Partner/Plan International programme manager, Mr. Laban Onisimus disclosed this at the Development of National Guidelines for the Implementation of Acceleration Basic Education Programme (ABEP) in Abuja.
Onisimus said that the input of Federal Government such as the Universal Basic Education (UBEC), SUBEB, National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non-Formal Education (NMEC), NERDC and other agencies were important in arriving at comprehensive guidelines for ABEP.
According to him, we have realised that as development partners, so many people are doing things differently. As you have plan international having a form of Accelerated Basic Education, so also is UNICEF, Save the Children and others doing things differently.
“So what we did in order to improve on coordination is to form a community of practice like an accelerated working group”
“We have it at the global level but we did is to activate it so that all of us as development partners will be speaking one language when it comes to accelerated learning”
“So we have the curriculum and we also have the guidelines that we are currently developing and all members of the working group are part of this workshop,” he said.
Onisimus added that the idea was to ensure that each partner coming into the country to do an intervention on out-of-school children could adopt the same process and modules.
He said there was, therefore, a need for the working group to harmonise and coordinate activities around issues of ABEP.
“Every stakeholder is involved so that at the end of the day all of us will decide how the funding of ABEP will look like, how the structure is going to be like and the issue of enrollment of learners.
“ So when I go to Lagos and do issues on ABEP, it will be the same as in Sokoto and Gombe state… that is the idea of ABEP working group”.
He also said that the European Union had supported with 10,000,000 Euros for response, recovery and resilience especially in education services in Borno State.
According to him, the overall objective of the money is to increase the resilience of the education system and services in the conflict-affected areas of Borno State.
“The focus of the action is on increasing access to safe, quality and inclusive education opportunities (formal and non-formal) for conflict-affected children, adolescents and youths.
” This will be achieved through addressing the specific barrier of girls and boys in view of improving retention and completion, achieving better learning outcomes and improving access to livelihood and employment opportunities for youths,” he said.
He also said that specific objectives of the EU were access to safe, inclusive and quality primary and secondary education (formal) for both boys and girls in particular (age 6-18)in areas of displacement.
The Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Education Research and Development Council NERDC, Prof Ismail Junaid, had said the focus of the specialised curriculum designed for the Accelerated Basic Education Programme is on the acquisition of reading and writing skills.
The National Educational Research and Development Council NERDC had produced Accelerated Basic Education Curriculum, covering the three levels of the ABEP programme.
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