Chris Ochayi
12 September 2008
The Federal Government said yesterday that a total number of eight million children who have reached the primary school age are not in school, while about 60 percent are not attending secondary school, particularly amongst girl children in the northern states of the country.
This was contained in the report of Review of the Costs of Financing of Public Education in Nigeria presented by the Minister of Education, Igwe Aja-Nwachukwu in Abuja. The Ministry of Education, World Bank and the Department for International Development (DFID), put the report together.
It said, "based on the available date, only 63 percent of school age boys and 60 percent of school age girls nationwide currently attend primary schools. There is a large number of overage children in the system".
"The highest estimate of the number of primary school age children who are not in school is 8 million, suggesting that around 40 percent are not attending primary school and 60 percent are not attending secondary school, with markedly lower rates of participation in the northern states, particularly amongst girls".
Other problems associated with funding of public education as asserted by the document, were that, once students are enrolled in school, preconditions have to be met for them to learn and to develop cognitive skills in order to gain from the educational opportunities that are available".
"The physical environment has to be conducive to learning. Teachers have to be present, to know what and how to teach and to be actively engaged in teaching. They need to be able to use books and other learning materials".
The report summed it up that" learning achievement in Nigeria is amongst the lowest in Africa and the situation does not appear to be getting better".
On his part, the Minister of Education, Igwe Aja-Nwachuckwu regretted that the Federal government has made a huge financial investment in the education sector without commensurate returns in quality of out put.
He said, "the report has not only filled the existing information gaps on public funding of education at both the federal level and the SEPER States, but it is also set to change public perception about the management and financing of education in Nigeria".
In the past, according to him, "the volume of public expenditure on education was always used as the only indicator of government concern and commitment to the education sector".
He continued, "consequently, a huge financial investment was therefore being made in the education sector yearly without commensurate returns in quality of output. In recent years, particularly under the present administration, while we maintain the trend in increase in budgetary expenditure on education, we have focused attention on the way and manner these huge resources are utilized".
In this regard, he explained, mechanisms are being put in place to track the trends and uses of public expenditure on education.
He announced that, "the federal Ministry of education, in collaboration with development partners, is now in the process of developing the requisite technical capacity for strategic, medium-term and operational planning at both federal and state levels.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
