Daud Olatunji
The Federal Government says more than one million children who were previously out of school have returned to classrooms within the last 20 months.
The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday while receiving the newly appointed United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Country Representative to Nigeria, Prof Isaiah Da Rosa, on a courtesy visit.
A statement by the minister’s Special Adviser on Media and Communications, Ikharo Attah, quoted Alausa as saying the development was part of the Federal Government’s ongoing reforms to expand access to education and improve learning outcomes.
The minister also said almost 6.7 million girls had benefited from various government interventions designed to improve access to education and encourage school retention.
Alausa, however, called for a more balanced approach to education, warning that efforts to improve girl-child education must not result in the educational needs of boys being overlooked.
“While we sustain the gains made in girl-child education, we must also give greater attention to the educational needs of boys,” the minister said.
“Our human capital development must leave no child behind.”
He said the Federal Government’s education reform programme was built around six priority areas: technical and vocational education and training, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, out-of-school children, digitalisation, girl-child education and quality assurance.
According to him, the government is investing in skills development, technology and teacher capacity while increasingly relying on data to identify educational needs, target interventions and measure their impact.
Alausa said the government’s Accelerated Teacher Professional Programme was targeting one million in-service teachers as part of efforts to improve the quality of teaching across the country.
He also welcomed UNESCO’s technical support in teacher development, TVET assessment, digital transformation, education for peace, and media and information literacy.
The minister stressed that partnerships with international organisations would have greater impact when they complemented programmes already initiated by the Nigerian government.
“Partnerships will be most effective when they reinforce programmes and initiatives already established by the Nigerian Government,” he said.
Alausa assured the UNESCO representative that the Ministry of Education would continue to collaborate with the organisation to achieve the objectives of President Bola Tinubu’s education transformation agenda.
UNESCO cites support for Nigerian education
Earlier, Da Rosa reaffirmed UNESCO’s commitment to supporting Nigeria’s education reforms, describing the organisation as a technical partner ready to provide expertise in areas identified by the Federal Government.
He said UNESCO had maintained a presence in Nigeria since the 1960s and had contributed to several areas, including TVET, teacher development, education for peace, science, culture, communication and information.
Da Rosa commended the ministry’s progress in digitising education data and expressed UNESCO’s readiness to deepen its support for TVET, teacher capacity development and the reintegration of children who are out of school.
He disclosed that UNESCO-supported programmes had trained more than 28,000 teachers across different states and reached over 1.7 million students.
The UNESCO representative said the organisation’s specialised institutes were available to provide further technical expertise to strengthen Nigeria’s education sector.
He added that UNESCO would continue to support efforts to mobilise domestic resources and build strategic partnerships aimed at expanding access to education, improving quality and equipping Nigerian children with the knowledge and skills required to contribute to national development.
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