http://allafrica.com/stories/200809120553.html


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.

http://www.afrika.no/Detailed/16568.html


The Minister of Education, Dr. Igwe Aja-Nwachuku, on Wednesday said that it was lamentable that 11 million children of school age were still roaming the streets in the country.



By The Punch (Nigeria) | 04.24.2008


Aja-Nwachuku stated this at a press conference where he inaugurated the 2008 Education for All Week with the theme “Quality education to end exclusion.” In April 2000, Nigeria joined over 170 countries that met in Dakar, Senegal to reaffirm their commitment to deliver Education for All by 2015. The minister said that the 11million children were part of over 80 million children worldwide who were out of school.

He noted that the EFA week was designed to draw attention to the fact that access and retention levels particularly for certain categories of people such as girls, children with special needs and those in difficult circumstances, were still low. He said that teething problems accounted for the failure to retain such categories of children in school despite government efforts towards attaining the EFA target of 2015.

The minister said that the annual celebration was not only for the country to rededicate itself to the attainment of the six EFA goals, but to take stock of the achievements and increase the country’s momentum to achieve the goals by 2015. He, however, said that the alarming figure of 11 million out-of-school children was an indication that the country still had a long way to go in achieving EFA goals by 2015.

He said, “This was underscored by the E-9 Report which stated that Nigeria is one of the two E-9 countries that might not achieve EFA by 2015. “This revelation is further underpinned by a recent article in the PUNCH Newspaper of March 25, 2008 page 14, credited to media advisory unit of UNICEF, that no less than 10 million children of school age are out of school in Nigeria .”

He said that the article further broke down the figure to show that 4.7 million were of primary school age while 5.3 million were of secondary school age. The minister said that the article also indicated that 62 per cent of the children out of school were girls while 38 per cent were boys.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=47811

this is from 2003


ABUJA, 26 December 2003 (IRIN) - More than 15 million Nigerian children under the age of 14 are working, mostly to help pay for the cost of going to school, according to a new survey by the Federal Office of Statistics (FOS).

The survey, conducted with support from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), showed that over eight million of the country's working children were also attending school.

These children said they were forced to work part time in order to pay for their school fees and books. However, they admitted that the need to earn money often caused them to skip classes.

Head of the FOS, Ahmadu Umani, said on Tuesday that the survey showed there were 7.8 million boys and 7.2 million girls between the ages of five and 14 working in Nigeria.

The country has an estimated population of more than 120 million.

The survey showed that about six million of the working children were not in school at all. Nearly one million of these had been forced to drop out due to poverty or because their parents demanded that they work in order to boost the family income.

Of the six million children not attending school, 51 percent were girls and 49 percent were boys.

However, the survey found that more than eight million children were working and going to school at the same time.

About 61 percent of working children were able to remain in school because they saved money from their work to pay for their education, it said.

However, many children in this category said they often skipped school because of the demands of work.

“This indicates that working children lose valuable school days,” Umani said.

The survey found that working children in rural areas engaged in activities such as agriculture and hunting, while those in towns were often street traders or apprenticed to artisans. Most started working between the ages of five and nine and continued into adulthood.

The FOS chief said the report was intended to provide information that would be useful in designing “various government intervention programmes, or projects and policies on child labour”.

He said there was urgent need to fight against child labour in Nigeria, not only by mounting a sustainable public information campaign, but also through policy measures.

Nigeria signed a memorandum of understanding with the ILO in 2000 for cooperation in implementing the International Protocol for Elimination of Child Labour.

Subsequently, a national programme on the elimination of child labour was created.
This set up a monitoring system to gather data on child labour practices in Nigeria.

This known officially as the Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme on Child Labour. It is managed by the FOS and conducted the survey just published.

There is no legal minimum age for starting work in Nigeria, but the ILO recommends that children should be in school until the age of 14.

These PDP people should equip the existing schools, build new ones in the rural areas, improve the welfare of teachers to attract graduates like the Banks are doing, pay a premium to entice graduates to relocate to rural areas, enforce conviction of parents/guardians whose children are found to have dropped out of school and stop all these speeches and 'pity' stories.

ow11:

These PDP people should equip the existing schools, build new ones in the rural areas, improve the welfare of teachers to attract graduates like the Banks are doing, pay a premium to entice graduates to relocate to rural areas, enforce conviction of parents/guardians whose children are found to have dropped out of school and stop all these speeches and 'pity' stories.

U seriously think the Government doesn't know d right thing to do? Dats the problem cos they know these things, we just dont have the right people up there.