Kwara education reform records 180,000 enrollment, reduces illiteracy by 50%

Laide Abel, Managing Director of Kwara State Leading Education Achievement and Reform Now (KwaraLEARN), has said that the programme records 180,000 enrollment of pupils for learning in two years.

He said the project, initiated by the Kwara State governor, Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, involved Government’s huge investment in modern technology to empower teachers and support learning in basic classes.

Abel, who at a stakeholders’ retreat marking the second anniversary, noted that KwaraLEARN had improved literacy and numeracy skills of pupils in Kwara basic schools by at least 50%.

A statement by Mashood, Abdulrafiu Agboola, Deputy CPS to the governor, quoted the director, saying, “so far, we have seen a lot of impacts, and I will say in two years, we are happy with the results we are getting. For instance, the number of our school children who could not read has been reduced by over 50%, while the number of our children who could not solve simple numeracy sums has been reduced by over 50%. We will continue to do more to achieve more positive results.

“Another area that I must talk about is the improvement in the enrollment of children in schools. The school enrollment has increased to over 180,000 children from primary 1 to 6 across all public primary schools in the state from 120,000 when the programme commenced.

“That shows the impacts and acceptability of the programme. Similarly, absenteeism has also dropped by 50 per cent because everyone understands that they are being monitored directly from different situation rooms”, he explained.

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Muhammed Baba Salahu, Chairman, House Committee on Education, praised the Government for investing so much to turn around the education sector in the State, saying the outcome had shown a clear departure from the past.

“KwaraLEARN project is very promising, although in the Education sector you cannot do it all at a time. Rome was not built in a day. So, we still have some gaps, but it is a clear shift from the ugly past.

“We sincerely thank His Excellency Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq for the right investments in education and many other sectors,” he said.

Similarly, Sa’adatu Moddibo Kawu, Commissioner for Education and Human Capital Development observed that the KwaraLearn initiative has been extremely impactful, while the progress recorded so far has been very encouraging.

“It has really improved the learning outcome tremendously across board. We saw more of these excellent results in the recent examinations at that level. We have also been able to check absenteeism in the classroom. So, the programme has been very impactful,” she said.