The Universal Basic Education Commission UBEC, says the conduct of the 2022 personnel audit of basic schools in Nigeria will soon begin.
The Executive Secretary Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr Hamid Bobboyi announced this during a high level consultative meeting on the 2022 National Personnel Audit (NPA) of all basic education institutions in Nigeria.
Bobboyi added that the exercise would enable the Commission collect accurate data on school enrolment, the number of teachers and other personnel in the system as well as facilities among others.
Bobboyi decried the dearth of data on basic education saying it has remained a major challenge.
He added that education planners and decision makers have had to make do with data that are not up-to-date or are outrightly falsified.
He noted that the last time the personnel audit was conducted was in 2018.
He maintained that the desire of the Commission is to put in place a structure that would be updating the 2018 database on continuous basis and through this build a culture of data generation and management down to the school level.
According to him, the exercise would be carried out in collaboration with the State Governments and the Federal Capital Territory in all schools offering full or elements of basic education.
He warned that Nigeria’s school data for any particular period should be a national data available for use in and outside the country. He added that from the schools to the federal level, and at all times, the number of characters of learners, teachers and other personnel in schools must be in sync.
“Our desire after the excercise was to put in place a structure that would be updating the 2018 database in continuous basis and through this, build a culture of data generation and management down to the school level. This could not be achieved due to the absence of facilities and personnel at the difference levels.”
He said the successful conduct of the excercise will give Nigeria a credible basic school data that can be quoted and used with confidence all over the world.
“One can hardly over emphasise the importance of up-to-date data, accurate and reliable data in the implementation of educational programmes. Data enables us to plan effectively towards a systematic achievment of the educational objectives, track progress made, identify the strengths and weaknesses of implementation strategies and form the basis of making informed decisions.
“The absence of current and reliable data often leads to faulty plans whose objectives are difficult to achieve.
“The 2018 excercise has been the most comprehensive because, unlike the previous two excercises which were limited to public schools only, it covered all categories of public and private basic education institutions.
“The outcome of the excercise was generally acknowledged to have met global standards and become acceptable as a useable tool for planning and tracking basic education in Nigeria.
“We can ensure a successful conduct of the excercise so that Nigeria can have credible basic school data that can be quoted and used with confidence all over the world.”
Emmanuel Ukoh
