Executive secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Dr. Hamid Bobboyi, has said that the commission is making frantic efforts to reduce the number of out-of-school children in the country from its current 10 million.
Bobboyi said this, during a capacity-building and training session for executive chairs of state and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Universal Basic Education Boards at Lagos Business School in Lagos.
Figures from UBEC reveal that the number of children aged six to 11 who are not enrolled in school has declined from 10.2 to 9.6 million between 2018 and 2021, and the number is projected to drop even further to 9.5 million in 2022.
However, global data on out-of-school children between ages six and 18 years collected by the United Nations Educational Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) reveals that Nigeria now has about 20 million out-of-school children, which some misconstrue for ages six to 11 years.
Making clarifications about the above stated data, Bobboyi said, people still do not understand nature and how UNESCO arrived at the figure of 20 million out-of-school children, noting that UNESCO has adopted a new methodology with the Sustainable Development Goal in mind.
“UBEC has its own statistics and has presented them to UNESCO, which have been validated with figures, and the only thing we need to do is make a push to ensure that we reduce the number of out-of-school children,” he said.
Bobboyi while highlighting challenges in the sector, therefore called on UBEC, State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) and other relevant stakeholders to synergies in line with their mandate in order to move the sector forward.’’
