Council Proposes Funding Mechanism For Education In Anambra

Anambra State Educational Advisory Council has recommended a new funding mechanism that includes community participation, an education trust fund, and improved funding for teacher recruitment and training in the state.

The vice chairman of the advisory council, former minister of Aviation, Chief Osita Chidoka, in a report to the state government, also said multiple education platforms in the state should be repurposed into a single technology platform capable of providing access to information, training videos, student results, and performance data across all metrics.

The Anambra State Educational Advisory Council report was titled “Solution Agenda: Shaping the Future of Anambra State through Innovative Educational Strategies” to Governor Prof. Chukwuma Soludo at the Governor’s Lodge Awka, Anambra State.

The 18-member council which has Governor Chukwuma Soludo as chairman and Chidoka as vice chairman, were inaugurated to develop new pathways for delivering quality education and improving learning outcomes for students in the Anambra school system. The commissioner for Education, Prof Ngozi Chuma Udeh, served as secretary.

Anambra State, as of the 2022/2023 academic session, had 1,098 public and 2,694 private Early Child Care and Primary Schools. The total number of students in the public segment was 255,897 pupils.

In the secondary school segment, the state has 263 public and 769 private secondary schools. The student population in the public secondary school was 133,741 students.

Anambra State had consistently ranked within the top three in WAEC and JAMB scores over the years.

However, Chidoka, in a statement on the report said, “The report focused on elevating the state’s education system. Our key recommendations include:

“A new funding mechanism that includes community participation, an education trust fund, and improved funding for teacher recruitment and training.

“Repurpose the state’s multiple education platforms into a single technology platform capable of providing students, parents, inspectors, and teachers access to information, training videos, student results, and performance data across all metrics.

“Redesign the school inspection and supervision framework to enable grading and ranking of all schools in Anambra State along pre-set criteria like quality of infrastructure, performance in state standardised tests, learning outcomes, student’s performance in national examinations, and teacher qualifications, attendance, and performance.

“Aligning the state’s aspirations with global standards by joining the Program for International Students Assessments (PISA) as a sub-national government. Anambra State should dream globally. One of the critical lessons from PISA 2022 was that lower-income nations could improve education outcomes by prioritising teacher quality over class sizes.”

He added that the council invited stakeholders across the education spectrum for inputs, held several virtual meetings, and identified and reviewed the educational framework for six countries across the continents, emphasizing Africa.

He added, “Governor Soludo, in his speech, recognised the report’s significance, hailed its content as “excellent” and its recommendations as “innovative.”

“He promptly directed the operationalisation of the report’s key recommendations, which include introducing a new funding model for public schools in line with his vision of free and qualitative education already implemented in all public schools, setting new standards for school inspection and supervision, and developing a strategy for grading and ranking schools across the state,” he said.