*Says bill will help over 500,000 out of school children
By: AUSTINE AGBO EMMANUEL, Kaduna
Family Health Advocacy in Nigeria, (FHANI) has called on the Ministry of Education, Kaduna State to ensure the speedy domestication of e-learning in the state before May, 2023.
Rise up Leader, FHANI, Kaduna State, Grace Maikano made the call during a two-day capacity building trainings for social media influencers and journalists in Kaduna yesterday, stressing that the bill will help educate thousands of out of school children in the state.
e-Learning is the process of sharing knowledge through various modern channels, such as radio, television, and the Internet, specifically delivered everywhere other than the traditional classroom where the teacher is teaching, which gives students the liberty to learn in the comfort of their zone.
According to Grace, Kaduna State has of recent, been faced with all forms of insecurity mainly banditry and kidnapped, a situation she noted has discouraged parents to send their children to school and has affected girls children the most.
Citing a current data from Kaduna State annual security report of accountability and transparency 2021, she noted that 74% of girls who are affected by insecurity and have their communities displaced, dropped out of school and just 20% of the total population are transited to other schools in different secured locations.
She added that the adoption of e-learning in schools will improve enrollment, retention, and learning outcomes, stressing that the modern mechanism has revolutionalized the conventional method of chalk and board style of learning imparted to the students.
She said, “so far, we started this project on 15th November 2022 sponsored by the rise up project, through Public Health Institute in California. We have done advocacy at the state level, where we met with commissioner of education, human resources and internal security. We enlightened them that there is a policy that has to do with e-Learning here in kaduna State and then to see about how it can be implemented from the national policy, so it can be domesticated here in Kaduna State.
“The data that we got from Kaduna State Ministry of Education is that we have over 500,000 10 to 18 year old girls that are out of school mainly because of insecurity.
“They are either at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps or they are at home and their parents are scared of sending them to school because of the fear of insecurity.
“And it is mostly prevalent in five local government areas that we have looked into, which are: Birnin-Gwari, Giwa, Igabi, Chikun and Kajuru. So these are the five major local government we want the project implemented to start.
“We really wish that before they go out of office in May, they gets the unit formed and domesticate e-learning policy here in kaduna so that all the works we have done so far will be sustainable.” She added.
