Number of out-of-school children drops to 10.1m – Report
The number of out- of -school -children in Nigeria has witnessed a slight decrease from 10.5 million to 10.1 million, the 2018 new audit report of the National Personnel Audit (NPA) has revealed.
Speaking during the national presentation and launch of the 2018 NPA report of basic education institutions in Abuja, Chairman, Technical Committee of the audit, Prof. Gidado Tahir revealed that the report captures 33,241 public schools as well as 43,348 private schools across the country.
The report, which exposed the infrastructural deficits in the basic education sector, revealed that out of the projected population of 40,841,946, which captured children between the ages of six-11 years, only 30,648,028 were enrolled in school.
This according to Tahir accounted for about 75 per cent of expected primary school age children in the country, adding that with the development, an estimated 10,193,918 primary school age children were not in school.
‘’North-West Nigeria has the highest number of out of school children, closely followed by the north- east.
‘’The burden of out -of –school children from our report was borne more by boys than girls were. The boys’ figure of 6,340,621 constituted 62 per cent of primary age children without access to primary education while girls contributed 3,853,297, representing 38 per cent,’’ Tahir added.
Earlier, the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, commended President Muhammadu Buhari- led government for keeping faith in the delivery of quality education in the country.
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He said that from 2015 when the government came on board, N173.1billion was approved for the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) as marching grant.
‘’Out of this, N153billion was released to states. Similarly, N34 billion was released to states for teachers’ personal development and N8 billion was released to states for education of children with special needs.
‘’UBEC has received all its allocation 100 per cent before and on time from 2015 to date. When it became apparent that most state governments could not raise their counterpart funding to access marching grants, the president approved the deduction of N71.6 billion from the share of states Paris-club reimbursement.
