The United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the six southwestern states have formed a partnership to fight the menace of the out-of-school in the region.
UNICEF and the six state governments made the commitment in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, during a two-day regional stakeholders’ meeting on Out-of-School Children and Retention, Transition and Completion Model for Ekiti, Ondo, Lagos, Osun, Oyo and Ogun states.
UNICEF Chief of Lagos Field Office, Mohammed Okorie, said the meeting was borne out of the agency’s commitment to ensure that children have free access to quality education.
He said the dialogue focused on bringing together key stakeholders from the six states to discuss interventions, identify key performance indicators, as well as develop strategic home-grown action plans to mitigate the challenge of out-of-school children in the region.
Okorie said the issue of out-of-school children and low retention, transition and completion in education had become an albatross that must be urgently got off the neck of the region.
To do this, the UNICEF chief said the six state governments must develop and implement targeted intervention programmes that would address all the factors militating against free access to quality and basic education.
UNICEF Education Specialist Azuka Menkiti stressed the urgent need for the states to adopt retention, transition and completion models to tackle the menace of out-of-school in the region.
She noted that a reduction in the rate of out-of-school children and retention, transition and completion could be achieved if the governments expanded access to secondary education, enhanced quality learning and strengthened support systems through the implementation of workable policy, budgeting and set up plans.
Menkiti, who called for more funding to the education sector, especially secondary education, urged the governments to stop treating it as a second fiddle to basic and tertiary education.
She said increased budgetary allocation for secondary education would not only significantly reposition the sector, which had suffered neglect in terms of critical infrastructures, equipment, low quality of teachers, leading to the alarming rate of the out-of-school children.
Also, an education specialist in UNICEF, Mr. Babagana Aminu, stressed that the retention of school children had been one of the challenges in the zone.
The specialist said strategic efforts must be geared towards creating sustainable solutions to ensure that every Nigerian child has the opportunity to complete their education and assimilate the adolescents that dropped out into the formal education.
He added: “In terms of being out-of-school in the Southwest, almost on average, putting all six states together, according to the multiple cluster indicator survey that was conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), it shows that about eight per cent of children are out of school.
“But that is not the most worrisome data. If I must say concerning the Southwest, most of the worrisome data has to do with retention; that is, retaining those children that must have enrolled in school, but not only retaining them. Are they completing the level of education that they have enrolled in?
By Rasaq Ibrahim, Ado-Ekiti ThisDay
