An International Non-governmental Organisation (INGOs), Plan International Led Consortium in partnership with government agencies and Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) are working on national guidelines for the Accelerated Basic Education Programme (ABEP) for the country.
Mr Laban Onisimus, EU Partner/Plan International Education Lead Manager, disclosed this at the Development of National Guidelines for the Implementation of Acceleration Basic Education Programme (ABEP) in Abuja on Friday.
The Programme has in attendance participants from Steet Child, Save the Children (SCI), ActionAid Nigeria (AAN), Family Health International ( FHI 360) and the International Rescue Committee (IRC), among others.
Onisinus said that the input of Federal Government’s such as the Universal Basic Education (UBEC), SUBEB, National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Non-Formal Education (NMEC), NERDC and other agencies were important in arriving at a comprehensive guidelines for ABEP.
According to him, we have realised that as development partners, so many people are doing things differently. As you have PLAN international having a form of accelerated basic education, so also is UNICEF, Save the Children and others doing things differently.
“So what we did in order to improve on coordination is to form a community of practice like an accelerated working group.
“We have it at the global level but what we did is to activate it so that all of us as development partner will be speaking one language when it comes to accelerated learning.
“So we have the curriculum and we also have the guidelines that we are currently developing and all members of the working group are part of this workshop,” he said.
Onisinus added that the idea was to ensure that each partner coming into the country to do an intervention on out-of-school children could adopt the same process.
He said there was therefore need for the working group to harmonise and coordinate activities around issues of ABEP.
“Every stakeholder is involved so that at the end of the day all of us will decide how the funding of ABEP will look like, how the structure is going to be like and the issue of enrollment of learners.
“ So when I go to Lagos and do issues on ABEP, it will be the same as in Sokoto and Gombe state, so that is the idea of ABEP working group,” he added.
He also said that the European Union (EU) had supported with 10,000,000 Euros for response, recovery and resilience especially in education services in Borno State.
According to him, the overall objective of the money is to increase resilience of education system and services in conflict affected area of Borno State.
“The focus of the action is on increasing access to safe, quality and inclusive education opportunities (formal and non formal) for conflict affected children, adolescent and youths.
” This will be achieved through addressing the specific barrier of girls and boys in view of improving retention and completion, achieving better learning outcomes and improving access to livelihood and employment opportunities for youths.” he said.
He also said that specific objectives of EU was access to safe, inclusive and quality primary and secondary education (formal) for both boys and girls in particular (age 6-18)in areas of displacement.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the NERDC had developed an approved curriculum for ABEP which had been presented at the 2020 edition of the National Council of Education (NCE) in Port Harcourt.
The Accelerated Basic Education Programme is an all-inclusive programme designed for children between the ages of 10 and 18 years who are displaced, marginalised but not necessarily displaced by emergency.
The objective of the Programme is also to increase flexible Non-formal education (NFE) opportunities for out-of-school adolescent and youths. (NAN)