Common Heritage Foundation, a nongovernmental organisation, recently organised a stakeholder’s workshop on the implementation of the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act and other educational policies in conflict.
The meeting, which took place in Abuja was to put Nigeria’s Universal Basic Education Act, 2004, into practice in conflict and crisis settings.
The Senior Special Educationist with the World Bank, Professor Tunde Adekola, said the initiative was timely, especially when talking about education in crisis area.
To address the issue at hand, he said, it must be multi sectional, multi donor and involve both the formal and informal sector.
“And you need the service providers like the state and non state actors to be able to participate. The non state actors we are talking about are the community, civil society organisation, private sector, philanthropist, etc. Everybody needs to work together with several other government MDAs, to improve access and universal basic education.
“Part of the challenges is systemical. We should see how we can involve more partnerships, collaboration and corporation from all the state actors to be able to focus on the issue of access, quality,equity and so on.
The second one is the issue of quality, relevance, not about more money for education, teachers training but about more results, in the learning aspect like how many children can read and write before they get to age 9, how are we reducing the pupil teacher and pupil classroom ratio and so on. We need to set targets and set strategic plans with measurable indicators to be able to know how much we are making,” he said.
