ADSUBEB Partners UNICEF to Tackle Out-of-School Children Challenges
From Umar Dankano, Yola
The Adamawa state Universal Basic Education Board, ADSUBEB and the United Nations Children’s Education Fund, UNICEF have agreed to establish a collaborative framework leading to increased school children entrolment and retention in the state.
Rising from a meeting with traditional and religious leaders to building commitments for increased demand for education in Yola Thursday, the duo have expressed concerns with the poor and deteriorating condition of school children which conducted survey indicates are on the high side.
In his submission during the interactive engagement, Chairman of the ADSUBEB, who represented by Board’s permanent member ll, Aliyu Sa’ad confessed to the fact that available statistics of out of school children in the state is not good considering the efforts been rendering by the state government.
Sa’ad applauded the interventions been rendered by development partners especially the UNICEF noting that promotion of education is the beginning of transformative strides in every society or community.
He however commended Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri’s government for provision of free education to children from primary to junior secondary school level but said due to the growing indices more need to be done to reduce the ugly scenarios.
Joel Jutum, Unicef Consultant asserted that available data statistics indicated that 1.4 Million children are out of school in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states with 48% being girls insisting that community participation has become apparent towards mitigating the situation.
Jutum said that the 2021 out of school children (OOSC) survey conducted by the ADSUBEB with technical support from Unicef revealed that 650,640 children are out school in Adamawa state alone with 336,312 being boys while 314,330 are girls respectively.
Breaking the data further, Jutum stated that,there are 220,461 out of school at the primary school level with 118,699 being boys while girls are 101,763 in number.
According to him,238,806 dropped out of junior secondary school (JSS) level with 122,350 being boys and 166,456 are girls while at the Senior Secondary school (SSS) class,they are 191,373 dropped out as 95,263 are boys while 96,111 are girls regrettably.
Earlier, Ralpheal Ayedipe, Unicef Education Officer, Bauchi Field Office said that Unicef support the out of school children projection in Adamawa state and had streamlined programs to achieving such goals including community mobilization to increase enrollment and retention.
Ayedipe added that even non formal school set up have been captured in the “Education is the solution” drive maintaining that already validation of 20 Non formal centres have been done in Hong local government area as sensitization of another 20 Tsangaya school Proprietors have also taken
Place in the state.
While urging the education secretaries of various local government councils in the state to support Governor Fintiri’s government for free education to children,he enjoined them to secure commitments of their people and Communities towards achieving those out of school children are return back to their schools.
