Only 5 per cent private schools in Northwest– DFID

United Nations’ Department for International Development (DFID) has disclosed that only five per cent of the total number of private schools exists in the North western part of the country.
At a one-day-stakeholders forum tagged: “Developing Effective Private Education Nigeria”, the agency said a data generated under the DEEPEN project, indicated that the seven North –West states of Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Jigawa, Kebbi, and Kano have only 5% share of all the private schools existing in the country.
Representative of the regional coordinator of DFID in Kano state, Adamu Iliyasu, made this disclosure in an address to flag-off the programme conceived to share experiences generated from the implementation of DEEPEN project in Lagos state.
According to Adamu, the distribution of data of private schools in Nigeria generated from a study carried out by the agency indicated that North – Central has 22 per cent private schools, SouthEast has 27 and South –West has 38 per cent, respectively.
He disclosed that DFID was concerned about this development, which informed it resolved to continue to support the federal government in the implementation of programmes geared at advancing education in the country.
In line with this commitment, Adamu said DFID was putting finishing touches to a plan towards implementing a special educational support programme for the states in the northern parts of the country, as a way to bridge the educational gap.
Shedding light on the nature of the DEEPEN project, Gboyega Ilusanya, team leader of the project, said the initiative was a five-year programme, which started in 2013 and was aimed addressing the constraints associated with private schools operation in the country