Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, has called on state governors across the country to face the challenge of supporting the implementation of the goals of the School-Based Management Committee-School-Improvement Programme (SBMC-SIP) for quality standard to be entrenched in the quest to make the education sector effectively vibrant.
Speaking at the flag-off of the programme held in Government House, Kano, Monday, Adamu said the programme was one of the effective government engagement and collaboration strategies for forging linkages and partnerships with stakeholders in the delivery of education at the basic level, and that the SBMC-SIP was seen as a milestone.
Adamu who was represented by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Mr. Sonny Echono, however stated that the UBE programme was a homegrown initiative aimed at addressing national aspirations and meeting global expectations through the provision of qualitative functional education free of charge, to all children of school-going age.
Adamu said the programme’s implementation experiences had shown that the delivery of basic education in the country was beset by daunting challenges that had militated against Nigeria’s drive towards meeting her developmental goals and global expectations.
He said the federal government was fully aware that inadequate funding was at the centre of all the challenges that were facing not only the basic education but the entire education sector, adding that for the myriad of such challenges to be jettisoned, the President had constituted inter-ministerial committee, with the hope that by the time it submitted its report, the disturbing trend of inadequate funding would be addressed.
Speaking in the same vein, the Executive Secretary, Universal Basic Education Commission, Dr. Hamid Bobboyi, said the essence of the guiding principle of the self-help and community engagement, was to engender strong partnership and the desire to draw and harness state resources and skills alongside the abundant material and human resources in the community with a view to developing the basic education sub-sector.
He says no nation can sustain a robust, functional and qualitative basic education without the meaningful and strategic involvement of its citizenry, stressing the need for instituting the SBMC-SIP, which was informed by the fact that the overall success of the basic education sub-sector depends largely on the level of community awareness, participation and support to the programme.
He pointed out that it was the vision of the commission in the SBMC-SIP to put up a strategy for school development, whereby community initiated self-help projects would be implemented by the SBMCs as the SBMCs have been globally recognised as school development agents.
The commission’s delivery and engagement with stakeholders were many, he added, cutting across infrastructure development through the direct intervention programme and the UBE matching grant
Giving a brief account of SBMC-SIP, the Director, Social Mobilisation, Alhaji Bello Kagara, said global practices encouraged school committees to involve in planning, improvement, and management of schools in their domains and localities and that global reforms agenda in the education sector focus on decentralisation of school governance and devolving responsibilities to structures and groups closer to schools.
In his remarks, Kano state governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, stated that his administration was ever willing to support programmes aimed at instilling quality into the educational sector with the introduction of compulsory and free education, positing that the drive for the consolidation of the much pronounced basic education, required a collective resolve on the part of stakeholders for the objectives to be achieved.