The number of out-of-school children in Nigeria, which already accounts for a fifth of the world’s out-of-school children, could worsen due to the coronavirus pandemic that has disrupted learning and forced parents in the lower-income bracket to enrol their children in apprenticeship programmes.
According to a 2020 mid-year survey by SBM Intelligence, done with the backing of OSIWA (The Open Societies Initiative for West Africa), lower-class respondents said they put their children in apprenticeships because staying at home was not helping those children to achieve anything, and shortly after, they began to see some income coming in.
This trend could persist post-pandemic in Nigeria where 10.5 million of the country’s children aged 5-14 years are not in school, according to UNICEF.
“Some parents in Lagos made it clear that they are, at the moment at least, not interested in having their children go back to school because they already put their children in apprenticeship programmes,” the SBM report stated. “The most popular programmes are programmes for auto mechanics, tailoring and painting.”
One of the respondents, Mummy Sikiru, a mother of three in Isolo, Lagos, told SBM her two sons had been roaming the streets playing with other children.
“They did not touch their books, and the promised radio-based education never came. So, I decided that instead of allowing the boys to continue wandering the streets with other children, it was best that they learned a skill in carpentry that could help them in future,” she said.
On March 19, 2020, the Federal Ministry of Education approved school closures as a response to the pandemic. For nearly the equivalent of a full school term, many students have been unable to study because they lack tools to enable e-learning and some schools are not equipped for such.
Ministries of Education in Lagos, Ogun and Edo States released a schedule of radio and TV lessons for students in public schools, but this has not been effective, according to BusinessDay findings.
Slightly more affluent parents told SBM that they had hired private teachers for their children to hold private classes in the morning, but in such cases, the children still went for apprenticeship programmes later on in the day.
Even with positive news last month by the Federal Ministry of Education announcing secondary schools resumption on August 4 for JSS3 and SS3 students, some children might not go back to school.
Sikiru was clear that while her children will return to school upon resumption, they’d still have to keep learning the job after school hours and on weekends until they are perfect.
Sikiru’s children will be better-off than those of Iya Aina, a cleaner at a bank in Ibadan, who told SBM that her daughter Aina is becoming perfect in hair-making and depending on how well she learns the trade, will not go back to school upon resumption.
UNICEF notes that girls face a disproportionate disadvantage in accessing early education. Regionally, the northern part of Nigeria has a higher rate of out-of-school children, suggesting the COVID-19 might affect children there worse.
Apprenticeship, a method of training youths and the middle-aged to learn a trade or craft for their future wellbeing and livelihood, is seen as a positive complement to formal education in a country riddled with high unemployment incidence, some experts argue.
Over the last few years, there has been a clamour for a more entrepreneurship-driven economy built on craft and acquired skills that can create much-needed jobs.
Mummy Victor, who is a single mother of one based in Surulere, Lagos, believes her son learning to fix cars during the pandemic break would be in his best interest in the future. But she was clear that he would resume his studies whenever schools reopen.
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
