Katsina apportions 20% budget to education

By John Oba
Abuja

Katsina sate Governor Aminu Bello Masari, has stated that the state allocated 20per cent  of the 2017 budget to education because of the importance the current administration attached to the sector.
He also revealed that about N3 billion has been spent on construction, rehabilitation, renovation and upgrade of secondary schools for the 2016/2017 fiscal year on capital project.

Masari stated this recently during a media summit organized by the state to showcase its achievement so far.
He said the state had also increased by feeding allowance per day per head for boarding school students by 25 per cent, while also setting up Monitoring and Evaluation committee for effective monitoring of school direct feeding to ensure quality control.

“This is to ensure effective evaluation and monitoring of teaching and learning activities across all the schools in the state.  The new offices were established at Baure -Zango7, Sandamu12, Baure9 schools; Rimi – Batags 11, Rimi8, Charanci9 schools; Safana – Safana8, Batsari7, Dan Musa10 schools; Musawa – Musawa11, Matazu 6 schools; Faskari – Faskari15, Sabuwa5, Dandume 7 schools,” he said.
According to him, about N2 billion had been spent on the examination registration of over 134,141 students for different ‘O’ Level exams between 2015 and 2016.

“Government released the sum of N7, 000,000 for the conduct of Quality Assurance Evaluation in 25 secondary schools. The evaluation was conducted jointly by Federal Education Quality Assurance (FEQA) & State Education Quality Assurance (SEQA) for improvement of quality of teaching and learning.
“Currently, a bilingual primary school is established to teach young pupils English & French languages in addition to other conventional primary school subjects. The school is operating on a temporary site in the French Center, Katsina pending the renovation of the proposed permanent sit,” he explained.

He further pointed out that over 15,000 candidates sat for teachers replacement examination conducted by MOE (ERC), TSB, STEB and SUBEB to replace 1,933 teachers in the state.
“Though ongoing, this is the 1st time ever since State creation, such an exercise is taking place. In 2015, N18, 127, 480 was spent in conducting exams for 45, 944 students. 672 had 5 credits including Eng. & Math. In 2016 qualifying examination was conducted for 52,648 Senior Secondary School Students, where we recorded 1466 with 5 credits and above including English and at total cost of N23, 023,1 48. 38.

“Also the Ministry of Education conducted the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) for 80,848 students across the state which qualified a child to be promoted to Senior Secondary School.
“Katsina state has the highest numbers of literacy centers and facilitators in the North with 1091 literacy centers with 1669 facilitators that are paid between N3000-N5000 monthly with 37, 000 enrolment figure. In 2016, 87per cent passed the Literacy examination compared to last year’s 69 per cent,” he said.

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