Imo, Ekiti House Lowest Out-Of-School Children, Says UNICEF Report

Imo and Ekiti states have been rated as having the lowest number of out of school children in Nigeria, estimated at 1% and 2% respectively.

The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) Chief of data M4R, Claes Johanson revealed this while giving an overview of Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey 6 (MICS) result, at a media dialogue in Port Harcourt, yesterday.

The two-day media dialogue was organised by UNICEF in collaboration with the Child Rights Information Bureau (CRIB) of the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture.

Johanson however, said the highest rates of Out Of School in Nigeria now resides in Kebbi State with 65% rate, Zamfara 61% and Bauchi State 61% rate.

“Among children and adolescents aged 7-14years, only 27% have foundational reading skills and only 25% have foundational numeracy skills,” he said.

He further said the increasing population growth as a factor threatening positive impact on the out of school trend, saying three out four Nigerian children between the ages of 7 and 14 years are out of school while only one out of four actually learn in schools.

“The MICS 6 report revealed poor foundational reading and numeracy skills. We also see that there is room for improvement everywhere particularly in education.

“For the first time we are looking at children that are actually learning and and we see that only 25% at grade level in terms of reading and mathematics and one out of four children does not even go to school so the number of out-of-school children is still one in four and that is the same as five years ago so continuing education is the most important thing,” the UNICEF Chief of data said.

Also speaking, UNICEF Communication Specialist, Geoffrey Njoku said the media dialogue was organised to look into factors responsible for poor indices specifically as to why some lingering challenges still remain in some parts of the country.

“We have some good figures and we also have some that are not so good so we want to know why some of these indices are not very good we have to look at it from, could it be wrong identification of application of funds, could it be non-application, could it also be wrong identification of where to apply the funds?.”