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Indications have emerged that Lagos State now have over 2 millions out-of-school children across the state.
But the state government has vowed to tackle the challenge and rescue lot of children from engaging in various social vicesthrough the EkoExcel programme.
The Executive Chairman, Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board, LASUBEB, Wahab Alawiye-King disclosed this while speaking on the achievements of the programme introduced some years back. He said that since commencement of the EkoExcel programme, the government has also taken many out-of-school children off streets and protect out-of-school children from daily violence, abuse, neglect, exploitation and exclusion they face.
“It cannot be overemphasized that over 9 million out-of-school children need protection from the daily violence, abuse, neglect, exploitation and exclusion they face. Lagos State has over 2 millions out-of-school children, this is a problem that the government wanted to tackle with the introduction of the programme,” he said.
According to the Executive Chairman, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, at the inception of his administration, assured Lagosians that the provision of qualitative education was a major priority and he was determined to change the face of primary education by re-training and empowering teachers with technology-driven techniques to tutor students.
He said:”Besides, the first of the campaign’s four objectives is driving enrollment and reducing the number of out of school children in alignment with the government’s ‘Leave No Child Behind Policy’.
He further noted that more pupils would be enrolled and no effort would be spared in giving them quality education to become globally competitive.
However, the Chairman said a vivid example was Segun’s story that changed for the best during a pupil registration drive of the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board’s (LASUBEB) EKOEXCEL, a transformational intervention launched in 2019 by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to provide quality education to both the rich and the poor and upskill teachers leveraging technology.
“The enrollment drive exercise has yielded tremendous results since its commencement, with a good number of out-of-school children being captured and registered into EKOEXCEL schools as a result of the exercise, one in particular is the story of a boy called Segun Borno.Segun Borno wouldn’t have believed if he had been told before September 2021 that he would be enrolled in a primary school by that month end and improved his literacy and numeracy skills three months later.The reason was that until the morning of that September, while Seguns’ age mates were in school, Segun was on the streets, helping to support his grandparents and siblings from the proceeds of candy he hawked.
His grandparents were not pleased that he was engaged in petty trading, ultimately, their desire was for him to be educated but they couldn’t afford it. So, the young boy became a negative statistic, by being amongst the 258 million children and youths who are out of school globally according to UNESCO’s 2018 statistics” Alawiye-King said
Also speaking, Permanent Board Member of LASUBEB and oversight chair of the EKOEXCEL programme, Adebayo Adefuye, added that the decision to turn public schools into friendly places for learning has also boosted enrolment.
“We are making public schools a fun, friendly environment for learning and I’m certain we will see more improvements in our enrolment figures,” he said.
