By Stephen Adeleye.
The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, has urged stakeholders in education in Kogi to ensure that reliable data is obtained in all schools in the state for effective planning and policy matters.
Adamu gave the advice at the education stakeholders’ meeting and official inauguration of the 2018/2019 Annual School Census (ASC), on Monday in Lokoja.
Adamu who was represented by Mr Ojo Femi, Head of the Nigerian Education Information Management System (NEMIS), emphasised the vital need to obtain correct and reliable data during the exercise.
“It is very important to get correct data because Nigeria’s education data is not being reported globally, which has resulted into what the development partners called ‘out of school children’.
“Since there was no report for Nigeria’s education data, it was extrapolated that all the remaining over 10 million out of school children which cannot be accounted for globally, were pushed to Nigeria.
“This is because most of our schools especially, the private schools have not been able to give us correct data.”
He said that the exercise would help the state on budget and policy matters for effective planning that would place the Nigerian schools on the front burner of education.
The Governor of Kogi, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, said his administration made education the number one priority due to the value he placed on education, saying, “without education, you are going nowhere in the world.’’
Bello commended the United Nation Children Educational Fund (UNICEF), for their support to the education sector in in the state, being one of the five states benefiting from its support.
“We appreciate you as a government and we are looking forward for more support,” Bello said.
Bello who was represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Dr Folashade Ayoade, he enjoined all the stakeholders to give the state the needed support and take the school census very seriously.
“The exercise will enable us to know the number of schools, teachers, students, and out of school children in order to budget and cater for them.
“We can do nothing without accurate and reliable data, so, we must take it very seriously to ensure we get accurate data,” he said.
The state Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Mrs Rosemary Osikoya, said the exercise was important for education planning, government interventions, and support from development partners.
“All stakeholders at all levels including the school based management committee, will work together as a team for the 2019 data collection as it relates to our schools.
”The ministry in December 2018 issued out the guidelines for the establishment of school based management committee (SBMC) to all schools inline with the 2005 resolution of the National Council on Education.
”We are also happy that the state has a functional education information management system (EMIS) that would aid our work,” Osikoya said.
The commissioner added the ministry had used the whole lot of last week for preparations by meeting with different groups, written correspondences, and engaged different stakeholders, adding that the FMoE would take the stakeholders through the different instruments for the census. She explained that the reports of the census would be verified by stakeholders that would come from different level including UNICEF, Federal and other groups.
Osikoya urged all stakeholders including parents, community groups, teachers to support the progress as it would strengthen records management in schools in line with the extant policy.
“Supporting sustainable development is supporting school census. This is again one way for government to finally verify what we have in our schools, so, let us all give our support,” she said.
(NAN)
