The Minister of State for Education in Nigeria, Yusuf Tanko Sununu has called for joint efforts, especially from those responsible for basic education to ensure that Nigeria’s name is deleted from the global learning poverty list.
The minister stated this at the 25 Quarterly Meeting of the Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC Management with the Executive Chairman of State Universal Basic Education Boards, SUBEBS, with the theme: Redefining National and State Priorities for Effective Basic Education Delivery held in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
He urged the chairman of SUBEBs to review the current state of Basic Education in their various states by conducting needs assessments and coming out with new approaches to overcome the challenges and justify the huge investment by the federal government in the sector.
He said the federal government will continue to create policies that will ensure that basic education is not neglected as it is fundamental to all levels of education, good citizenry and national development,.
“We cannot continue to sit on the fence and allow our educational system to continue to deteriorate, we must take the bull by the horns and delete the name of Nigeria among the “Learning Poverty.
“The Federal Ministry of Education has not rested on its oars in overseeing the Basic Education subsector just like UBEC has continued to champion its implementation in the country,” he said.
He regretted the 60 percent out-of-school children statistic, stressing that despite the Federal Government’s huge investment, interventions and technical support, the basic education sub-sector is still bedeviled with a lack of infrastructure, inadequate teachers, learning aids, monitoring, school dropouts, out-of-school children (indices of learning poverty) resulting in falling standard of education.
He said under the renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu, a new roadmap that includes issues of Basic Education will soon be unveiled as there is also an arrangement to meet with the Nigeria Governors Forum on how to overcome these challenges.
According to him, the federal government established the Universal Basic Education Commission to handle funds for implementation across the 36 States of the federation and the FCT.
He urged state governments to ensure through the SUBEBs that the free basic education policy of the federal government is implemented effectively so that no child regardless of religion, sex, language, or status misses school.
“Including the elimination of school charges so that learners from indigent homes can also access basic education and contribute their quota to nation building,” he said.
He said that education is on the concurrent list as such state governments play more active roles at the basic education level even down to the local governments, nonetheless, the federal government will continue to support through policies, matching grants, Teachers’ Professional Development and Instructional Materials, as well as World Bank, assisted programmes in order to improve learning at that critical level.
He said the theme of the meeting is apt urging participants at the meeting to further share experiences, and key good practices as new innovations in basic education delivery would be unveiled to them by the UBEC management team.
The Executive Secretary of UBEC Dr. Hamid Bobboyi in a keynote address said there are emerging trends in the basic education sector that demand new approaches to tackling them; hence the meeting and the theme.
He said as the world continuously evolves, it is an ethical obligation for stakeholders in the education sector to redefine, revisit and rethink the national and state priorities for effective basic education delivery.
“Learners are constantly changing and since learning is an ongoing process, instructional practices must be refined and questioned over the course of time,” he said.
He said attention should be drawn to the challenge of learning poverty at the basic education level as Studies have shown that learners are graduating from primary school unable to read and write, stressing that this challenge must be addressed with the urgency that it deserves otherwise our educational system will be turning out dysfunctional citizens who are neither useful to themselves nor to their communities.
He equally called on Nigeria to invest in digital technology-aided education as it is the sure path towards producing globally competitive citizens, adding that the UBEC Smart Schools are modern models that States are expected to replicate.
“A phased equipping of existing schools with IT infrastructure and training of teachers should be adopted as a strategy for transforming the existing schools to smart schools,” he advised.
He said after the Kano meeting in 2022, the National Assessment of Learning Achievements in Basic Education (NALABE) exercise conducted across the country was successfully concluded and the reports are at the final stage and will be made public soon.
“The two activities are very important to the basic education sub-sector. One provides the required data for measuring progress in UBE implementation and the other measures learning outcomes. They both constitute critical tools for planning and informed decision-making in basic education,” he said.
Dominica Nwabufo
