Education stakeholders from Adamawa, Bauchi, and Gombe States have converged on Gombe to collaboratively tackle the pressing issue of out-of-school children in Nigeria.
The two-day session was dedicated to formulating effective strategies aimed at mitigating the prevalence of out-of-school children and enhancing retention, progression, and completion rates in secondary education.
The Chief of UNICEF Bauchi Field Office, Dr. Tushar Rene, highlighted that 10.2 million primary school-age children and 8.1 million junior secondary school-age children were currently out of school in Nigeria.
Dr. Rene, therefore, said there was an urgent need for collaboration between stakeholders to reverse the trend, especially in the northern region of the country.
Quoting statistics from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2021, Dr. Rene revealed a rise in the rate of dropout across both genders and wealth quintiles, particularly in the northern part of Nigeria.
He identified inadequate policy planning, budget allocation, teacher shortages, poor infrastructure, and cultural norms, as various obstacles hindering education in the country.
“UNICEF, in collaboration with the Universal Basic Education Commission, has developed the National Framework of Action to Reduce the Number of Out-of-School Children in Nigeria” and the Retention, Transition, and Completion Model” to address these challenges,” Dr. Rene said.
He said the framework and model will guide state-specific strategies to confront the out-of-school children phenomenon, enhance community accountability, utilize innovations and technologies, and ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all.
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Dr. Rene also encouraged active participation, dialogue, and knowledge-sharing during the engagement and expressed optimism that the meeting would yield clear and targeted strategies to reduce the rate of out-of-school children and enhance retention, transition, and completion in the education system.
Meanwhile, the Gombe State Commissioner of Education, Professor Aishatu Maigari, told journalists that the issue of out-of-school children had become a pressing concern, saying Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya had since assuming office in 2019, been actively addressing the challenge through policy implementation and collaborations with organizations like UNICEF and the World Bank.
Prof. Maigari said the Basic Education Service Delivery for All, BESDA initiatives and efforts by the State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB had been instrumental in addressing the issue, which had mopped out 350 thousands of children only to be told that we now have 750 thousand children.
She said the alarming increase underscored the need for intensified efforts to combat the problem and emphasized the need to double efforts to address the influx of new out-of-school children, despite ongoing initiatives to enroll and educate them.
The Gombe State Commissioner of Education said the statistics presented revealed that approximately 50,000 children were currently out of school, with a worrisome trend of 50 percent of school children not completing primary education, 52 percent not completing junior secondary school, and 51 percent not completing senior secondary school.
She added that currently over 25,000 students were registered to write the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) exams, with the government covering the fees for more than 19,000 of them to encourage completion of senior secondary.
