By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan
Oyo State Commissioner for Education, Science, and Technology, Professor Salihu Adelabu, has disclosed that the state government is working towards reducing numbers of out of school children in the state by ten per cent.
Prof Adelabu made this known on Wednesday at a 3-Day Support Mission Organized by the Oyo State Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology for three BESDA AF- TESS Beneficiary States, ( Oyo, Adamawa and Katsina in collaboration with the World Bank at the University of Ibadan.
The Commissioner maintained that the state government is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that residents in the state have access to quality education, thereby improving numeracy and literacy levels in the state.
Emphasizing the importance of the BESDA – AF- TESS project, he said the programme is in line with the Sustainable Development Goal four and Seventeen, that by 2030, education should be for all, adding that all school aged children are expected to have access to quality education, irrespective of their background.
“This BESDA Additional Financing is targeting four major points. First is access, there should be school for all, all the school aged children must be in the school. The other one is quality; that is why we are strengthening the system, we are putting a lot of things in place to make sure that there is access, there is quality and there is improvement in our numeracy and literacy level in the state”, he said.
Prof Adelabu added, ” In the last administration of Governor Seyi Makinde, 20 percent of our out of school children were back in school, and we are working around 10 per cent because we want that to be reduced drastically”
Adamawa State Commissioner for Education and Human Capital Development, Dr. Umar Garba Tella while speaking, said concerted efforts would be made so that the aims and objectives of the program development partners in Adamawa State comes into fruition.
Dr Tella lauded the World Bank for supporting the Adamawa State Government in its determined efforts to provide the children the right access to acquire quality education, regardless of where they live.
“This project is a performance-based project, two indicators were given to us in Adamawa, and we are happy to partner with the World Bank. Fundamentally, we want a situation whereby there won’t be any child in the state, that is out of school, there won’t be any school without a teacher”
The Education Specialist, World Bank, Martin De Simone in his remarks said the intervention was targeted at improving the quality of teaching and learning in basic schools, providing infrastructure and increasing the numbers of classrooms.
De Simone then advised participating states to learn from each other and focus largely on how to achieve results within the programme’s life span.
