President Bola Tinubu has agreed to do a thorough count of schools in Nigeria from primary to tertiary level, their conditions and live-in facilities, proximity to one another, and educational infrastructure, among other details.
The stocktake will also check the number of all teachers in Nigeria, their qualifications, training support received, and all pupils and students in primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions, gender, and exam grades, among other things.
Thursday’s system-wide policies are based on a lack of coordinated, verifiable, and authentic data on all aspects of the education sector in Nigeria, which is important for planning, according to Tinubu.
Thus, the intention is to completely revamp the education sector to enhance learning and skill development, increase enrollment, and ensure the academic security of the nation’s children, according to a statement signed by Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale.
The statement is called ‘President Tinubu establishes national education data system and approves skill development for all levels of education, teachers’ training and support nationwide.’
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund states one in five out-of-school children in the world are in Nigeria, totaling 10.2 million out-of-school children at the primary level, and 8.1 million at the junior secondary school level as the country continues to struggle with banditry, multidimensional poverty, and the rising cost of living.
But Ngelale said the approved policies are captured as DOTS, representing: Data Repository, Out-of-School Children Education, Teacher Training and Development, and Skill Development and Acquisition.
The information is expected to guide federal and state interventions for teachers’ training and development as well as overall support.
It will also provide data on gender ratio (boys and girls), their specific learning needs, and who is in school or who has dropped out based on daily monitoring with year-by-year reporting.
The presidency also announced the creation of a dedicated portal/dashboard in the Federal Ministry of Education, offices of state governors, and local government chairpersons, which will host and disperse this information for the federal government, states, and local governments to monitor in real-time.
“This new data tracking structure will enable the government to track the progress of students, thus having a clear data-driven mechanism for interventions, especially concerning out-of-school children, girls, and those with specific learning disabilities, among others,” it said.
Regarding out-of-school children’s education and training, it highlighted ongoing efforts by the Federal Ministry of Education which it said is implementing the government’s policy through the activities of four of its agencies.
“Already, there are about two million beneficiaries. The system-wide policy will further enhance the education and training of the nation’s out-of-school children,” Ngelale revealed.
The Education Ministry will help and train teachers in digital skills to make it easier to use technology in classrooms, as stated by the Presidency regarding teachers’ development and support.
The aim is to introduce technology and digitization to teachers and students in all levels of education.
It also highlighted the importance of skill development for all levels. The President has approved the National Skills Framework.
The framework is meant to increase the variety of skills in the education sector to effectively prepare Nigerian students with the necessary skills, knowledge, and values to be productive members of society.
The NSF is designed to provide the right skills for each level of education, empowering generations of Nigerians with the needed abilities for the changing needs of the global economy of the 21st century, according to the Presidency.
It was added that this framework is expected to address skill gaps, educational quality, and unemployment concerns, as students will gain specific skills in addition to general knowledge.
The programmes are expected to reset learning and connect the 'DOTS' for significant improvement of the education system in Nigeria, in line with President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, as assured by the Presidency.
