According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), there are challenges with student completion, retention, and transition in Nigeria’s educational system, especially in the North East and North West of the nation.
UNICEF’s Bauchi Chief of Field Office, Tushar Rane, stated that throughout the previous ten years, the situation has gotten worse during a two-day regional stakeholders’ meeting on out-of-school children and retention, transition, and completion models in the states of Bauchi, Gombe, and Adamawa.
He claims that Nigeria is leading the world in educational issues because of the large number of primary and junior secondary school-age children who are not in school—10.2 million and 8.1 million, respectively.
Only 63% of students of primary school age frequently attend school, according to him. As per the results of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2021, a mere 84% of children successfully move from primary school to junior secondary schooling. Of the 5.9 million pupils in Nigeria who begin Primary Grade 1 each year, less than half—roughly 2.4 million—continue through to the end of Junior Secondary Grade 3.
Gombe State Universal Basic Education Board director Yawoji Ahmed Bala blamed the high rate of out-of-school children on social standards, peer pressure, and early marriage in his speech.
According to reports, the purpose of the stakeholders’ meeting was to secure agreement on the development and application of strategies to lower the number of children who are not in school and enhance completion, transition, and retention rates, especially for teenage girls and boys enrolled in secondary education.
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