Addressing Low School Enrolment

The report by the Federal Ministry of Education recently, that 16 million Nigerian children are not enrolled in primary and junior secondary schools across the country is not a cheering news.

Of that figure, 11 million should be in primary schools while the other five million ought to be in secondary schools.

According to the report, only 500,000, out of the 40 million non-literate adults are currently enrolled in mass literacy programmes in the country, but the figure could even be higher considering the number of Almajiris in the North and children of fishermen in the Niger Delta region that are not yet exposed to formal education.

The low level of children enrolment in schools has, for sometime now, remained a big challenge to the education sector and amounts to an indictment on government’s inability to do all the right things, needed to lay a solid foundation for future growth of the country.

Regrettably, public schools in most states of the federation are either in poor states of disrepairs and overcrowded or lack basic infrastructural facilities necessary to aid learning. The Tide regrets a situation where children sit on bare floor for learning or study under the trees. It is unthinkable to imagine how such a scenario can encourage school enrolment.

Added to this is the fact that most parents can ill- afford the outrageous educational demands made of children in many states largely because of their meagre earnings.

To reverse the situation, the federal, state and local governments must address the root causes and improve access to education. Specifically, the governments must work in synergy to actualise the objective of the Universal Basic Education UBE) Act, in order to increase enrolment in public, primary schools, which is programmed to ensure nine years of continuous education for every Nigerian child as a bold step towards achieving the Education For All by 2015, target.

By the UBE Act, every Nigerian child of primary and junior secondary school age is entitled to enjoy free and compulsory education, and prescribes penalties for parents that fail to comply with the demands of the Act. Unfortunately, government’s efforts to increase enrolment in schools have not achieved much result partly because parents whose children are not in school are never punished as prescribed by the law.

Another disturbing fact is that most states have failed woefully to access the UBE Implementation Fund made available to them by the federal government because of their inability to meet basic milestones of performance instituted as checks against abuse of the UBEC matching fund. For instance, to access such funds a state is expected to contribute not less than 50 per cent of the total cost of projects to be expected. By last year, more than N40 billion belonging to various state governments was known to be lying idle at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) because the state reneged on their counterpart funding requirement to access the funds.

But  the states alone are not to blame. Parents must complement government efforts by showing deep interest in their children and wards, their over­  blown indigent status notwithstanding.

We say so because every child deserves popular education to prepare him or her for future challenges. It is so important that many educationists have at various times said that it is next in importance to freedom and justice without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently entertained.

That being so, government should intensify its enlightenment of parents on the numerous ‘advantages and penalties for denying their children basic education. In fact, the revelation should propel all other stakeholders towards positive attitudinal change while, State governments, in particular should urgently contribute their counterpart funding necessary to access the UBE funds.

Even so, The Tide considers it instructive to advise UBEC to consider more meaningful collaboration with the Governors’ Forum, with a view to encouraging states still lagging behind to step up compliance and work more assiduously towards boosting enrolment in primary and junior secondary schools.

However, integrating non-formal education centres into the formal sector, we think, should be seriously considered as a means of complementing other efforts. Afterall, education for all should be a responsibility of all.

And unless concerted efforts are made by all stakeholders and governments at all levels, to arrest the downturn in school enrolment, the country will mortgage her future and the attainment of national and international goals of Education for All, the Millennium Development Goals, and Vision 20:2020 will remain elusive.