Following the aftermath of Boko Haram menace that rubbished school system in the northeast, stakeholders in the education sector from Adamawa, Bauchi and Gombe states have converged in Gombe to collaboratively tackle the issue of out-of-school children in the North East sub-region. The effort is being supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), as part of its contribution to mitigating the prevalence of out-of-school children to enhance retention, progression and completion rates in secondary education in the region.
Addressing the participants during the meeting with the current statistics, UNICEF’s Bauchi Field Officer, Dr Tushar Rene, said 10.2 million primary school-age children and 8.1 million junior secondary school-age children were currently out of school across Nigeria.
He expressed that this has called for an emergency response from all concerned persons and therefore, urged that there was an urgent need for collaboration between stakeholders to reverse the trend, especially in the northern part of the country.
Rene identified inadequate policy planning, budget allocation, teacher shortages, poor infrastructure and cultural norms as some of the obstacles standing against education enrolments in the country.
In her remarks, Gombe State Commissioner for Education, Dr Aishatu Umar Maigari, said the issue of out-of-school children had become a pressing concern in the state.
Dr Maigari added that there are approximately 50,000 out-of-school children in the state, “with a worrisome trend of 50 per cent of school children not completing primary education, 52 per cent not completing junior secondary school, and 51 per cent not completing senior secondary school.”