Due to the lack of reliable information about every facet of Nigeria’s education system, President Bola Tinubu has mandated the completion of a comprehensive census in order to identify problem areas and facilitate appropriate planning.
The presidential directive handed down on Thursday, is expected to produce data on all schools in Nigeria from primary to tertiary level, their present conditions and live-in facilities, proximity to one another and infrastructure.
It will also ascertain the number of teachers in the country, their qualifications, training support received, number of pupils and students in primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions, gender, and exam grades, among others.
The Federal Ministry of Education, currently under Mamman Tahir’s purview, will partly spearhead the process by hosting a portal or dashboard where the critical information will be dropped.
A statement by Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity noted that the policy DOTS, an acronym for Data Repository, Out-of-School Children Education, Teacher Training and Development, and Skill Development and Acquisition will comprehensively overhaul the education sector to improve learning and skill development, increase enrolment, and ensure the academic security of the nation’s children.
The presidency said the information that will be derived from the exercise will guide federal and state interventions for teachers’ training and development as well as overall support.
“It will also provide data on gender ratio (boys and girls), their specific learning needs, and who is in school or who has dropped out based on daily monitoring with year-by-year reporting.
“There will be a dedicated portal/dashboard in the Federal Ministry of Education, offices of state governors, and local government chairpersons, which will host and disseminate this information for the federal government, states, and local governments to monitor in real time.
“This new data tracking architecture will enable the government to track the progress of students, thus having a clear data-driven mechanism for interventions, especially concerning out-of-school children, [especially] girls, and those with specific learning disabilities, among others,” the presidential spokesman added.
On the challenges of out-of-school children’s education and training, the Federal Ministry of Education said it is already implementing the government’s policy through the activities of four of its agencies, with about two million beneficiaries already recorded.