Lack of access is denying 20m children secondary school education – FG

The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, has said out of about 23 million children enrolled in public primary schools nationwide, only about 3.75 million are able to secure admission to Junior Secondary Schools.

This is just as he has enumerated steps being taken by the government to bridge the gap and drastically reduce the number of out-of-school children, OSC, in the country

He stated this on Monday during a parley with media executives in Lagos.

Giving a statistical breakdown of development in the sector, Alausa said the nation has 70,333 public primary schools with a population of 23,627,232 pupils and that out of the figure, only about 3,758,201 are able to transit to the nation’s 11,858 pubic junior secondary schools.

” This is unacceptable and even if we consider those who go to private primary and secondary schools, it is still something we have to work on and which we are working on. The unfortunate aspect of it is that those who are stuck at primary school level and cannot go further suffer from lack of access, not majorly funds to proceed. We have taken the bull by the horn and we are working seriously to reverse the trend.

“I have met with the Nigerian Governors’ Forum and impress it upon them the need to build more schools. We are also taking census of out-of-school children and we have been to seven states and we got the figure of about 450,000 from those states. We are calculating that the figure may not be more than 10 million at the end of the day.

“We are also engaging private schools owners to take some of these children and the government will be responsible for the payment of a large percentage of their fees and even buy their uniforms. We are also resuscitating the School Feeding Programme to attract more pupils and students to public schools.

“With respect to teachers to man public schools, I can say that we have qualified teachers out there ready to work. I have also written to state governments on the need to employ more teachers and some of them like Enugu have replied. Enugu is recruiting 2,000 new teachers and others are doing same,” he explained.

He added that the first National Teachers Summit was held in Abuja recently to motivate the teachers and let them know that their labour of love is not in vain.

Alausa also said the FG is working on creating Learner’s Identification Number for each child enrolled in primary school, whether public or private and that it would help in monitoring such a child no matter where he or she moves to for studies

On the Common Entrance Examination usually written by final year pupils in primary school to move to junior secondary school, Alausa disclosed that the government is going to phase it out.

He added that it would be replaced by Continuous Assessment of each pupil compiled over the years of schooling.

On how the government was able to resolve the lingering face-off between it and the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, the Minister stated that the streamlining of all the committees interfacing with various staff unions did the magic.

“Before we came to office, a number of committees and panels were set up meeting with different staff unions at the university, polytechnic and college of education levels. They would agree one thing with a group and another with the other group. But we streamlined all into one committee, the Yayale Ahmed Panel and everything was consolidated.

We have only started with ASUU, we have not abandoned and we will never abandon other groups, whether academic or non-academic. We are talking with them and they know we are on the same page with them. We don’t want any disparity among the unions . There is no discrimination at all,” he explained

He also mentioned that public tertiary institutions are being supported and encouraged to make more money from endowments.

“Harvard University makes over $74 billion in endowments. There is nothing stopping our universities from doing same. I attended a medical school here in Nigeria, as we talk, I have not got any mail or text from my alma mater asking me to donate to the school’s endowment purse,” he stated.

To stem the tide of abduction of pupils and students, Alausa said School Safety Initiative has been taken to another level with the establishment of School Safety Department and the adoption of technology to ensure safety in schools.

To ease transportation on campuses, the FME, he stated, distributed 240 electric tricycles and 12 solar powered charging stations to 12 universities in the last three months.

Alausa gave the assurance that the Bola Tinubu administration would not relent efforts in repositioning education in the country for better results.

Culled from punch