Desk officers of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) from the 19 northern states and the FCT are undergoing special training in Kano on the use of the template to access intervention funds.
The template is designed to eliminate the cumbersome nature of action plan preparation andto ease all the difficulties involved in accessing and implementing the intervention.
The director of Fiscal Planning, UBEC, Sadiq Sa’ad, made this known to newsmen on Monday during a workshop for desk officers from the north in Kano.
He described this move as one of the newly implemented reforms introduced by the executive officer, Hadiza Garba, aimed at delivering qualitative basic education in the states and resolving the problem of out-of-school children.
“When you talk of the UBE programme, the main implementers of the programme are the states, that is why we have gathered them here.
“The training will be in two phases, this is for the 19 northern states and the FCT, so that we will carry everyone along on those key areas of the reform that have to do with intervention funds,” he stated.
However, he mentioned two major challenges with which they will interact with the participants, which have to do with utilising the ground matching intervention funds, saying the new one is very flexible.
“You would agree with me that we have been implementing UBE for the past 20 years. The Act was passed in 2004, and implementation began in 2005, so there are many emerging issues in terms of peculiarities in the different states.
“So, with this reform now, we will try as much as possible to come up with new ideas, new initiatives that will give the states more room to see how they will come up with more programs in terms of ensuring quality delivery in our schools,” he added.
He explained that the innovations to be expected are in terms of utilisation guidelines and the templates they use in developing their work plans. They can access any of the funds with the commission.
“For them to access the federal government intervention funds with the commission, they have to submit an action plan or work plan. We have now revised the templates to make them user-friendly and to accommodate other emerging issues related to the supplementation of our basic education,” he stated.
The training focuses on preparing work action plans using the new templates to access UBE intervention funds by states and FCT.
The training is for 19 Northern states, and the FCT has three participants from each state, with one resident supervisor. The same is true for the zonal offices across the Northern states.
