United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has stresses the need for government and other education stakeholders to invest in Nigeria leaning passport programme to bridge the learning gap created by school drop outs.
Juliet Chiluwe, chief of office, UNICEF Enugu Field Office, stated this in an advocacy meeting with critical education stakeholders in Enugu recently.
She said that, according to the recent (MICS) report, 38 children in Enugu out of every 100, do not enroll in primary education at the school entry age of 6 and among those that enroll, 10 boys drop out at the primary; 13 boys and 15 girls drop out at the JSS levels.
Outside Enugu, the other two focus states out of eight states under UNICEF Enugu Field Office, such as Benue has 58 children out of every100, while Cross River has 40 children out of every 100 that do not enroll at primary age or drop out at JSS level.
She lamented that “in Nigeria, 10.2 million children remain out of school at the primary level and an additional 8.1 million remain out of school at the junior levels”.
She said that the school closures due to insecurity in the 2020/2021 academic year affected 1.3 million children in 11000 schools, and predicts that these school closures will result in $3.4 in unrealized earnings for these children over the course of their lives.
Chiluwe emphasized that the gaps in foundational skills are cumulative across lifecycle, without foundational learning, students often fail to thrive later in schools and are at a higher risk of dropping out.
Read also: UNICEF moves to vaccinate millions of children affected during pandemic
“They also do not acquire the human capital they need to power their careers and economies.”
Speaking on the level of compliance in the state, Celestine Ngwu, Enugu State coordinator of the Nigeria learning passport, said that both the students and teachers are developing very high interest.
“Since the launch of the program on June 30, 2022, we have been able to sale the program to the stakeholders, all the education boards, the private schools owners, the mission schools, parents, students, teachers and other users. As at now, we have not gotten to our target but the first huddle has been crossed to let the people know what the learning passport is all about”.
He said NLP is a learning platform that is created to bridge the learning poverty gap in the society. “Today, our schools are embracing it, children use it at home even those who are at school now know that they can also study at home, out of school, which is the essence of the whole thing.
“It came as a result of challenges of COVID 19, our schools are complying, our schools are keying into it, education boards and we are overcoming certain challenges, which include availability of devices, and UNICEF has intervened with about 440 tables, 40 projectors and 20 routers. We know it is not enough but we have been able to supply 20 schools across the state”.
He appealed to the state government, groups and Individuals to invest in the Nigeria learning passport project because it is something worth encouraging.
Earlier, Chris Edenwatu, director, planning, research and statistics, Ministry of Education Enugu, said the advocacy meeting with UNICEF and all the 17 local governments education secretaries, was to continue keying into the Nigeria Learning Passport program.
Edenwatu, who described UNICEF as a strong supporter of learning in Enugu State said, “With the intervention from UNICEF, Enugu A field office, the expectations in the registering and participations of education stakeholders would be very high.
The Nigeria learning passport is a digital platform created to help people to access learning contents on every subject that are though in basic and post basic schools, free from the net by the use of either the mobile phone or computer system.
Edenwatu said that after the advocacy the education secretaries are expected to extend the reach of the core state driver team to get to the basic schools they are in charge of in the seventeenth local government areas of Enugu State.
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