By James Ogunnaike, Abeokuta
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Ogun State House of Assembly, on Thursday signed a certificate of commitment to reduce the number of out-of-school children in the state.
The certificate of commitment was signed when Mrs Celine Lafoucriere, UNICEF Chief of Lagos Field Office and her team paid an advocacy visit to the State House of Assembly on the reduction of out-of-school children in the state.
The visit was facilitated by the House Committee on Education, Science and Technology, led by Hon. Yusuf Amosun, representing Ewekoro State Constituency.
Speaking during the courtesy call, Lafoucriere explained that the visit was to collaborate with the State Assembly in identifying the affected children, ensure they are re-channeled towards education and put in place adequate infrastructures, teachers and improve the quality of teaching and education in the state.
She said, “Ogun is doing fairly well when we look at National numbers but for Southwest numbers there’s still lot of out-of-school children. So what we intend to do is strengthen this beautiful collaboration we have with the state government and reiterate our commitment to support the state.”
She reaffirmed UNICEF’s readiness to develop models for reducing the number of out-of-school children and increasing the retention, transition, and completion of adolescents from primary to secondary school levels; while advocating the need for parents to have a firm belief in educational system.
Reeling out the statistics of out-of-school children in the country, the Education Specialist UNICEF, Abuja office, Azuka Menkuti, said, 25.6 per cent of children were recorded for primary schools, 24.9 per cent for junior secondary school and 34.3 per cent for upper secondary school.
She said, “ For primary school age in Southwest 6.2% of children are not in school. The breakdown for Lagos state is 2.5%, Ogun 10.3%, Ekiti 2.4%, Ondo 4.5%, Osun 13% and Oyo 8.3%.
“For junior secondary school, in Southwest we have 8.5%. The breakdown for Lagos state is 4.2%, Ogun 12.1%, Ekiti 3.1%, Ondo 5.9%, Osun 18.7% and Oyo 10.6%.
“For upper secondary school in Southwest we have 19.2% with Ogun state having 20.9%.”
Responding, the Speaker, Ogun State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Oludaisi Elemide assured the UNICEF team that the State will continue to put necessary machineries in place to ensure increased collaboration with key stakeholders in the education sector to aid increased pupils’ enrolment and reduce number of drop outs, so that the State will continue to maintain its pride of place as the education capital of the nation.
The Speaker said that for the State to retain its pride of place in the sector, it was imperative for all hands to be on deck to address the prevalent issue of school drop-out students in the South west and the country at large.
He noted that as lawmakers, part of their commitment was to embark on intervention/ constituency projects through donation of educational facilities including blocks of classrooms, organizing summer classes, facilitating donations to schools from philanthropists to complement the efforts of the State Government at providing conducive environment for teaching and learning in schools across the State.
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