Gombe State Government has decried the alarming rate of out-of-school children in the state, saying available data shows that one in three children are not going to school, meaning that they are out of school (nationally) and the three out of four children going to school are not able to learn, read and do simple arithmetic.
The disclosure was made by the State
Commissioner of Education, North-East Nigeria, Dr. Aishatu Maigari while speaking to Journalists at the commencement of a one-day stakeholders engagement on Foundational Literacy Numeracy (FLN) organised by the Gombe State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) in collaboration with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Gombe.
A recent Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) report shows that 25 percent, that is, only One in every Four Nigerian children in Primary Four, Five and Six can read a text or solve a simple arithmetic, and a chunk of these problems are from Northern Nigeria.
To this effect, the Commissioner said that UNICEF is coming in to support the State in addressing what she described as the learning crises saying, “We have seen the statistics and it is a learning crises. Children are going to school but they are not able to read and learn.”
According to her, “Most of these come from rural areas and poor economic classes. In Gombe State, we want to make sure that no child is left behind in terms of quality and equity.”
While aligning and proffering solutions to the challenges, UNICEF, Bauchi Field Office Education Specialist, Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ado, said that a multi sectoral approach is expected to be implemented, if great improvement must be achieved.
He attributed the problem to be coming from the side of the Teachers, Schools Management (operators) and inadequate teaching and learning materials.
He said, “We must give consideration to the teachers, school environment by making sure the school is safe, and making sure the teachers are doing the right thing as well as ensuring adequate and proper monitoring of teachers in schools.”
Abdulrahman Ado also hinted that, “We want to bring the Teachers to the speed, which the world is going. Go along with the changing world, improvise different strategies and methodologies on how to improve the learning of the children.”
According to him, “It’s not going to be business as usual because it will be teaching at the right level. It is not going to be a situation whereby a teacher will go into class without necessarily taking into consideration whether the children have understood the concept or not.”
He stressed that, “Teaching at the right level entails that the first thing the teacher will do is to conduct an assessment of the children. Another thing is that the capacity development of the teachers is a continuous programme.”
“Before this meeting, we engaged teachers in an intensive fourteen (14) days training to build their capacity with the aim of improving their skills and in turn improve the learning of the children,” he stressed.
Also present at the stakeholders engagement were the State House of Assembly Chairmen on Education and Appropriation.
This is to ensure that key interventions are made to ensure that the State government scale up these programmes to improve the learning outcomes for all the school age children.
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