By Opeyemi Adelakun
The Federal Government has returned more than one million children who were previously out of school to classrooms within the past 20 months, the Minister of Education, Dr Olatunji Alausa, has disclosed.
Alausa made the disclosure on Tuesday in Abuja while receiving the newly appointed United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Country Representative to Nigeria, Prof Isaiah Barreto Da Rosa.
The meeting centred on strengthening cooperation between Nigeria and UNESCO as the Federal Government implements reforms aimed at improving the country’s education system.
According to Alausa, the reintegration of more than one million out-of-school children is one of the major achievements recorded by the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration in the education sector.
The minister also disclosed that nearly 6.7 million girls had benefited from government interventions designed to increase access to education and improve school retention.
He, however, called for a balanced approach to education interventions, stressing that the educational needs of boys must receive greater attention alongside continued efforts to promote girl-child education.
Alausa said the government’s human capital development agenda was focused on ensuring that no Nigerian child was left behind.
He identified six priority areas guiding the Federal Government’s education reforms as Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education, reintegration of out-of-school children, data and digitalisation, girl-child education and quality assurance.
The minister said the government was investing in skills development, technology and teacher training while using reliable education data to identify areas of need, direct interventions and assess their effectiveness.
On teacher development, Alausa welcomed UNESCO’s technical assistance, particularly in strengthening the capacity of teachers through the Ministry’s Accelerated Teacher Professional Programme, which targets one million in-service teachers.
He also acknowledged UNESCO’s support in areas including TVET assessment, digital transformation, peace education, and media and information literacy.
The minister stressed that international partnerships would deliver better outcomes when they complement programmes and priorities already established by the Nigerian Government.
Earlier, Da Rosa reaffirmed UNESCO’s readiness to support Nigeria’s education transformation efforts with technical expertise.
He described UNESCO as a technical partner prepared to assist in areas identified as priorities by the Federal Government.
Da Rosa noted that UNESCO had maintained a presence in Nigeria since the 1960s and had contributed to national development through programmes covering TVET, teacher development, peace education, science, culture, communication and information.
He commended the Ministry’s progress in digitising education data and expressed the organisation’s readiness to deepen cooperation on TVET, teacher development and the return of out-of-school children to classrooms.
The UNESCO representative disclosed that programmes supported by the organisation had trained more than 28,000 teachers across various states and reached over 1.7 million students.
He added that UNESCO’s specialised institutes remained available to provide further technical assistance to advance Nigeria’s education reforms.
Leave a Reply