Nigeria Governors’ Forum Chairman seeks 20% budget allocation for Education

The Chairman Nigeria Governors’ forum, Abdulrazak Abdulrahman has urged state governors across the country to increase to 20 percent their annual budget allocation to the education sector to mitigate funding challenges.

READ ALSO: Group Advocates Increase On Budgetary Allocation To Health Sector

This is just as he backs the call for the declaration of state of emergency in the education sector backed with action.

The Chairman made the call at a National Conference on the Learning Crisis in Nigeria organized by Unicef and the Federal Ministry of Education in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.

He said there was the need to follow standards for better funding of the educational sector in Nigetia by the 36 member states ro reduce challenges.

“We must follow UNESCO standards for an education system that is progressive and sustainable; governors at the various states must commit between 15 to 20 percent of our budget to education.

“I support the call for a state of emergency but it must be backed by actions, the resources must be provided and we must look at issues that have mitigated against achieving that sustainable growth.

“It is one thing to declare a state of emergency but it’s another thing to put all the resources and elements that will allow us to achieve it.

“So I support putting the resources in place to allow us to move fast at it. Our education is in crisis and a state of emergency should be declared in all sectors. We need a solid roadmap and I believe it is a collective involvement,” he said.

He decried the over 10 million out-of-school children in Nigeria.

“A situation where 6 million children are enrolled into school in Nigeria and only 2.3 million stay back shows that there is a crisis to be addressed.

“Similarly, 50% of our girls are not attending school because of violence, poverty, early marriage among others,” he said.

The Chairman was represented at the event by the Oyo state Governor, Sheyi Makinde.

UNICEF Nigeria Representative, Ms Cristian Munduate in her opening remark advocated for the use of a structured Pedagogy model to mitigate the learning crisis in Nigerian’s educational sector because of its flexibility and cost-effectiveness.

She said significant investment in the science of reading and numeracy in Nigeria over the past ten years has taught the agency what works to solve these crises using low-cost and highly adaptable models.

“Structured pedagogy, focuses on among others, continuous teacher professional development and availability of books in local languages, works to improve performance in literacy and numeracy.

“It works for children in school and for those out of school; it works in emergency settings and development settings. And it works for remote and distance learning when children cannot be in school” said Munduate.

According to her, this calls for celebration! But it is also a moment to ask how can we scale this to all schools to rapidly improve learning outcomes for all children.

“It starts with a coming together of all education stakeholders around a common purpose, a framework of action that coordinates and commits government leadership, resources, and accountability with that of development partners, civil society, academia, private sector, and children and adolescents themselves,” she said.

She said in the face of economic challenges efforts should be made for the sacrifices of parents not to be in vain

“In the current economic climate, it takes tremendous sacrifices for parents to send their children to school. We must make every effort to ensure that those sacrifices yield high returns for children and families in breaking the shackles of poverty, inequality, and unemployment through quality education. We owe them this and so much more,” she added.

She said for Nigeria, convening a conference on the learning crisis at this point is significant stressing that as there is support around the out-of-school problem, so too attention must be given to the learning crisis that is fueling the out-of-school problem in Nigeria.

She revealed that three (3)out of four (4) children in basic education in Nigeria cannot read with meaning or solve simple math problems, adding that when children fail to learn to read in the early years, they fail to read to learn in the subsequent years.

“Failure to learn begins to alienate children from the curriculum and their peers. This contributes to the staggering dropout rates each year between the first and last year of primary school.

“Learning is not just important for education outcomes, it is key to finding a higher paying job, for achieving better health outcomes and for navigating community and social life.

She enumerated underinvestment in the quality of education, overcrowded classrooms and shortages of qualified teachers as factors that are limiting opportunities for children to read, write and count in their formative years.

In the same born, UNICEF’s Chief of Education, Nigeria, Saadhna Panday-Soobraya said Nigeria’s learning crisis begins in Children’s earliest years as only half of Nigeria’s children are developmentally on track in early childhood.

“And only 60 percent participate in organized pre-primary learning,” she said.

She also lamented that the quality of teachers in the country is limited by poor pedagogical skills and lack of teaching and learning materials,