The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, says Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu remains committed to the development of non-formal education as part of efforts aimed at job creation and youth empowerment across the country.
The minister, in a statement by the Special Adviser on Media and Communications, Ikharo Attah, stated this during a special plenary session moderated by His Royal Highness, Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, at the ongoing Education World Forum (EWF) in London, United Kingdom.
According to the minister, the President Tinubu-led Federal Government, through the Education Ministry, is relentless in its push to empower out-of-school children through informal education while also empowering those undergoing formal education with entrepreneurial skills, which are part of non-formal education.
Dr. Alausa explained the Nigerian government’s wide array of informal education programmes targeting out-of-school youths, adults, and vulnerable populations.
These initiatives, according to him, are designed to bridge literacy gaps, provide vocational and technical skills, and integrate less privileged or marginalised groups into the economy.
“What we are doing is because we have a lot of out-of-school children. As such, we have to find a way that we can quickly get them a kind of non-formal education.
“We’ve created a separate curriculum for them called accelerated basic education program which ties them to what they should be learning in school.
“We’ve heavily focused on technical vocational education, which is still a form of formal education but in a non-formal setting to give people that have gone to school other skill sets, that they can use to benefit themselves and their community,” he said.
The minister highlighted the TVET initiative, which offers tuition-free vocational training, stipends, and start-up support, as well as the National Policy on Skills Development which promotes digital and vocational skills for youths and adults.
He also touched on the National Commission for Almajiri and Out-of-School Children’s Education (NCAOOSCE), which focuses on integrating the traditional Quranic (Almajiri) system with vocational, entrepreneurial, and digital skills training.
