The Association of Formidable Educational Development (AFED) has called on government to put in place necessary policy to low cost schools initiative to tackle the out-of-school children challenges in the country.
The National President of the association, Mr Emmanuel Orji, made the call on Wednesday in Abuja at the association’s 2022 African Education Conference.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the conference with the theme: “Tracking the Out-of-School Children, Who is Doing What?’’ is aimed at forming synergy with stakeholders to reduce the menace of it in the country.
NAN reports that data from the UNICEF showed that 70 per cent of children in schools cannot read and write or perform basic numeracy tasks by age 10.
This information was deduced from the National Learning Assessment 2017.
The UN agency said that Nigeria was facing a staggering learning crisis with learning outcomes being one of the lowest globally.
Orji said that the organisation had been proactive in tackling the case of out-of-school children by providing education at an affordable rate to children from low income households.
He said to totally eradicate the menace out-of-school, there was need for government and other stakeholders to support the initiative so that every child would have access to quality and free education.
“We all know that Nigeria is famous for having the largest number of out-of-school children, the figure is staggering and the figure is the population of some African countries.
“AFED has called on stakeholders to this conference to X-ray and review what currently is being done by Nigerians with respect to these children who are out-of-school.
“There is another worrisome dimension that have reviewed that even three out of four children that are in school are not learning.
“So, we are here to discuss and diagnose possibly what could be the problems and what the solution would be.
“What must be done going forward is for government to have a tentative policy that will support low cost private schools because it has be deduced to be seen as a solution to solving the menace,” he said.
The president also revealed that such initiative had been put in places like Kenya and Ghana and had proven to have working better with government’s support.
He commended the Lagos State Government for supporting the initiative, while calling on other state governments to emulate it.
“In Lagos State, more than 8,000 low cost schools are recognised and given special status as about one million children are already in those schools in Lagos.
“Research has revealed that most of these children in the low cost schools are learning better than students in other schools.
“So, we should be able to look into how we can harness these potential to ensuring we tackle the case of out-of-school children.
“Over the years, AFED has been on this project trying to track the children that are supposed to be in school but are not actually in school.
“So, the programme is to review what we have done and what the government has been able to do and form synergy to reduce this figure or totally eliminate it,” he added.
The wife of the former Gov. of Oyo State, Mrs Bukola Ladoja, said that the initiative was to fish out those children who are not in school and return them to school.
Ladoja, also the President of Reading Awareness Society for Development in Africa (RASDA) said the initiative was laudable as it would further help the country to discover the ways and manners lectures could be taught that would make children remain in school.
“We have discovered that it is lack of comprehension that is making children not to stay in school because children look for alternative when they do not comprehend what is being taught in school.
“Tracking the out-of-school children is not about knowing the numbers but about what will make them to stay in school.
“From the research RASDA conducted, we discovered that it is lack of comprehension that is making children not to stay in school because children look for alternative when they do not comprehend what is being taught in school.
“It is not about poverty because a lot of pupils decades ago who were children of the poor also went to school and stayed in school because they comprehended what they were being taught.
“But now there is a gap and thus this tracking will help in making the children to comprehend.
“Tracking is about separating the brilliant children from those that are deficient in learning fast and applying other techniques to teach them,” she said.
Ladoja, therefore, called for the right pedagogy in the training of teachers to bring out the best in every child “because they have the potential’’.
Ladoja explained that although the government was saddled with the responsibility of providing free education but since they cannot do this alone, every stakeholder must join forces to mop up part of the out-of-school children from the society.
Mr Chris Waya, a Sports Consultant, who spoke on the “Role of Sports in Tracking Out-of-School Children’’, said sports played critical role in ensuring that students remained in school.
Waya said that sports had been effective and played a role in disconnecting children’s mind away from social vices, while helping them to engage in profitable activities that would better their lives.
“The need to have sports in the schools cannot be overemphasised. Basically, sports are the tools that can be used to track pupils that are out-of-school so that they don’t get carried away with social vices.
“Sports help children to be engaged both physically and mentally for them to be fit in paying attention to lecture.
“By using sports, you can also generate data on students and they can also belong to community games where parents can be reached to get the children back to classroom,” he said.
The Vice Chancellor, University of Buckingham, UK, Prof. James Tooley, who is also AFED International Patron, stressed on the need to improve the condition of low cost schools.
Tooley added that this would help solve the out-of-school problems. (NAN)
