Out Of School Children: Getting Parents, Communities Involved

“Unless the issue of parents who refused their children going to school is made a crime, and we start jailing parents, the menace of out of school children will not be resolved,” the Minister of Education Adamu Adamu once said in the midst of persistent out of school children’s crisis in Nigeria.

The Minister had stated that there are many who are still working behind culture and religion,” factors which have also influenced the efforts towards curbing the ugly trend.

Adamu’s statement evoked the ordeals of Nigeria’s out-of-school children which is flatlining and has hardly shifted in the last twenty years.

Out-of-School Children has remained a major problem in Nigeria despite the combined efforts of the Nigerian government, international development partners and non-governmental organisations to tackle the pervasive issue, finding the solution remains a challenge.

The future of at least over 18 million children in the country, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) , still hangs in the balance.

This is happening despite efforts the Federal Government, through the UBEC, was doing to tackle the menace and other donor agencies.

Our reporter visited Mararaba, a district of Karu Local Government Area, Nasarawa State where he saw school-age children, sometimes in groups, wandering the streets with a plate begging for food.

A 9-year-old boy who identified himself as Sani said he was brought down to Maraba by his Uncle but didn’t know his whereabouts afterward.

Sani who said he doesn’t know about his parents, has been fending for himself unlike other abandoned children without any hope for education.

The boy who spoke through an interpreter said “I was brought to Mararaba when I was seven years old and my Uncle who brought me left me here afterward.”

However, a parent, Collins Kene, who resides in Mararaba said one of the factors that is compounding the out of school children in Nigeria is parents bearing children that they cannot not control.

He condemned parents who give birth and send their children into the streets without caring how they are faring. “If you cannot take care of them, they shouldn’t have given birth to them,” he said.

The story of Sani is one in a few that require strong partnership between parents, Communities, Local Government Areas and States, together with the federal governments’ efforts to eradicate the syndrome.

Given that the Government alone cannot address all of the problems, the meaningful involvement of parents taking up the responsibility and support from the community are essential in curtailing the crisis, according to experts.

A document obtained from the Federal Ministry of Education showed that in the last seven years, the ministry through UBEC has spent more than N500 billion (N553,134,967.498.50) on infrastructure development at the basic and secondary levels.

The document further noted that the ministry has invested heavily in the construction, renovation and rehabilitation of classrooms, hostels, laboratories, security and other infrastructural facilities at the basic and secondary levels.

How effectively this counterpart fund disbursed to the state governments through their States Universal Basic Education Boards has been utilised is the main challenge.

There had also been cases where some state governments would pay the 50 percent counterpart fund for UBEC to release their fund, and immediately the money hit the dedicated account; it was withdrawn and diverted to other purposes.

This is one of the reasons some states have accumulated un-accessed funds with UBEC for many years, because the commission always insists that the states must show evidence of judicious application of the previous allocation before they could access another one.

Commenting on the issue, Chief Education UNICEF Nigeria, Saadhna Panday- Soobrayan, said the convergence of high levels of out of school and low learning levels result in very low levels of human development, concentrating in the same regions and in the same countries is worsened by frequent and increasing learning disruption due to conflict, insecurity and more and more climate risk.

She said having high quality and timely data that tracks the child from household, to ECE, to primary to secondary is critical to know who is at risk and what are the reasons.

She stated further that engaging communities and families to raise awareness, promote continued learning, reduce child marriage and to identify needs for additional support and dealing with the overwhelming driver of poverty through cash together with access to high quality education services can help to tackle the menace.

“Also, recognizing that all children will never go to school, but they can still learn through accredited and certified alternative learning, many countries have instituted officially recognized, accredited alternative learning pathways based on best practice from the past decades.

Saadhna also stressed that increased access to high quality early childhood education and foundational literacy and numeracy, while ensuring that there are a range of options available to continue learning even when shocks hit us is vital.