As part of the plan to reduce the number of out – of-school children in the country, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) declares it will begin the Open Schooling Program throughout the federation’s 36 states by July.
The Executive Secretary, UBEC, Hamid Bobboyi, represented in the Commission by Unwaha Ismail, announced this at the Nigerian Open Schooling Program national stakeholders meeting in Abuja on Thursday.
The program planned to lower the huge number of out – of-school children in Nigeria was introduced on May 30 this year.
The program will obtain technical support from the Learning Commonwealth, Canada.
Mr. Bobboyi said the out – of-school children’s problem was on the rise for various reasons, but the federal government is now getting excellent attention.
“The federal government is thinking about putting an end to the issue by sending these children back to school, which is not only formal but non-formal education.
“UBEC has other initiatives for better basic education in the country; the out-of-school issue is multi-directional and has to be solved through multi-directional approach.
“We have education delivery for all programme, that is going on in the affected states to supervise them in the planning and to how we can reach as many as out-of-school children as possible,’’ he said.
He added that a few months earlier UBEC had meetings with other organizations on ways to address the huge amount of out – of-school children.
According to him, during the last conference some agreements were reached and those decisions will be enforced, especially on how other organizations can play a main role in it.
“This will identify the role they are going to play and we are going to synergise on how UBEC is going to coordinate the activities that will involve.
“Open Schooling programme will start by July because a lot of things needs to be put in place as planned, we need to start as early as possible,’’ he said.
The Executive Secretary also said that UBEC had not reached the phase of revealing how much the committee would spend on the program.
“We are working on what the cost elements involved in this programme would be, but what we are sure of is that Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) is going to give us technical support.
“Such support from the commonwealth will push this programme, but we also need to know which activities to be involved in, equipment needed to buy and other things we need to do.
“If all these are done, we can now disclose the estimated amount that the programme will cost,’’ he said.
The National Mass Literacy, Adults and Non-Formal Education (NMEC) Executive Secretary, Abba Haladu, represented by Afiniki Achi, said Nigeria has a huge amount of illiterates and something needs to be done to tackle them.
Mr Haladu said that NMEC lags behind and supports the Open Schooling initiative as it addresses the problem of children out of school.
“We are all in this fight together and hope this meeting is going to give us fruitful deliberation that will bring about the important of basic education.
“NMEC, UBEC and other agencies are doing very well, but most stakeholders do not really know what we are doing.
“We want the public to know that we are really working towards the reduction of number of out- of- school children and, we hope to end this soon,’’ he said.
The Director, National Teacher Institute for Field Operations and Student Services (NTI), Akaaba Yakubu, also said the Institute appreciated UBEC’s partnership.
Mr Yakubu pledged to continue to pursue education as it is the focus of the institute, adding that NTI will continue to impart expertise to educators and equip them with teaching methodology.
“The Out- of- School children issue is a great challenge to the country, the NTI partnership with UBEC will no doubt ensure that majority of these children are educated,’’ he added.
In Nigeria, approximately 10.5 million children are not in school, although education is officially free and mandatory, according to UNICEF’s findings of this study.
