Following the success of the school feeding programme that attracted 67% increase in enrolment in the over 4, 000 state-owned government primary schools within a year, Governor Nasir el-Rufai has earmarks N2.25 billion for free school feeding in government’s boarding secondary schools for 2017 among other programmes to boost education in the state. ABDULRAHEEM AODU reports.
On assumption of office in May 2015, Governor Nasir el-Rufai conducted a school census to avail his administration with the state of education in the state and came up with what he termed as ‘distressing results’.
The school census shows that there are at least 3,135 schools with no source of water; there are 4,077 schools with no source of electric power; the student completion rate is 24.17% for primary school, 54.94% for junior secondary school (JSS) and 70.14% for senior secondary (SSS).
There is poor teacher/student ratio in public schools, high level of unqualified teachers, high frequency of repetition among students: unacceptably high school dropout rate: poor school enrolment rate; and high number of dilapidated public schools.
He immediately set out to address these anomalies by introducing free education from primary school to junior secondary school to motivate parents and guardians to enroll their children in school and allow them complete their education until junior secondary at least. El-Rufai also started school feeding programme for primary school pupils.
The scheme, which gulps N1.1 billion monthly for the 1.2 million children in the primary schools then, was well received by parents, teachers and the pupils as shown by the record enrolment received the second year, drastic reduction in the dropout rate and improvement in education results across that level of education in the state.
However, in a bid to take the success recorded beyond junior secondary schools to senior secondary schools, Governor el-Rufai has introduced free feeding in the boarding secondary schools in the state. This is just as the state government reverted Government College, Rimi College and Sardauna Memorial College from day school to full boarding school.
According to Kaduna state Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Prof. Jonathan Andrew Nok, “Kaduna State Executive Council has approved that the allocation per student be increased from N180 to N300 per day. This will cost the government N2.25 billion every school year to feed 27,501 students.
“The government took the decision to increase the feeding allocation after noting the hike in the prices of foodstuff across the country. This is the second upward review of the feeding allocation this year.
“In January 2016, the Kaduna state government, in trying to improve the quality of meals given to students in the state boarding schools, had approved N60 per meal as against the N44 per meal that was budgeted in the past. This N60 per meal was piloted in six schools, whose feeding was outsourced to private caterers.
“Following the significant improvement in the quality of the meals, the scheme will now be applied to all the 31 boarding schools owned by the state government. This decision means that each student will be fed at N100 per meal, up from the previous N60,” Prof. Nok said.
Governor el-Rufai said that his administration will spend N44.8 billion on education in the 2017 fiscal year to carry out a comprehensive rebuilding and reequipping of schools in the state.
“Kaduna state will spend N44.84 billion on education. Education is the fundamental gift you can give to your citizens. We believe that the restoration of public education to the quality that we had when we were going to school is an imperative and we are doing all that we can, to achieve this. Part of the package of the reforms that we introduced in education included the free basic education for nine years and the primary school feeding programme.
“It was costing us N1.1 billion a month and we believe in it. We felt that even if you make education free, if a child cannot get pocket money to eat while in school, the parents may decide it is better to withdraw him or her from school and we didn’t want that. For the 1.8 million children in schools in Kaduna, this is what we were spending. We have spent, nearly N8 billion on this programme this year.
“We have spent N3 billion on school modernisation and N2 billion on renovations of schools. We spent N7. 5 billion on school feeding this year and N80 million on teachers’ professional training. We have paid N180 million for NECO exams for our students, we spent N275 million on scholarships – N145 million for local scholarship and N130 million for foreign scholarship and this will continue.
“I think we are doing well in education generally. I cannot prove it because it takes time before education investments are matured. But I can give you some statistics to show that we are doing well. When I took over in 2015, the total enrollment in our primary schools was 1.2 million pupils. By September 2015 when we announced the free basic education programme and abolished all fees including PTA levies, the enrollment went up to 1.8 million pupils, a 67 per cent jump in enrollment.
“It means that parents in Kaduna state want their children to get education, but poverty or financial constraints are an issue. All of a sudden, 700,000 pupils went into our schools and put pressure on our facilities, but we still think it is better for them to put pressure on our facilities than to remain out of school.
“In the September academic year, the enrollment moved to 2.1 million. Three hundred thousand more pupils came into the schools even though 200,000 have left having completed class six. So we are convinced that, the fact that more and more children are coming into our public schools is an indicator of success.
“But there is an issue because education is not just about enrollment and classrooms. Education is mostly around quality of teachers. What we inherited from the PDP government is that 42 per cent of our teachers in primary schools are not qualified to teach.
“Recently the chairman of Makarfi local government administered a test to primary school teachers in his local government. The test was an equivalent of what a class four primary school pupil should be able to pass and a large percentage of the teachers failed to score 40 per cent of the test. Some of them have certificates that show that they are qualified, but couldn’t pass an equivalent of class four examinations.
“We have a serious problem of teacher quality because over the years.
The previous government gave those without qualification five years to acquire qualification and that dateline expired in 2015. So those that have not acquire the require qualification may have to be eased out. That will open the opportunity for us to employ younger, educated and more qualified people.
“But in spite of this, Kaduna state came first within the northern states in the last WAEC exams and placed 12th overall in Nigeria. So I will say we are doing pretty well, we are not where we should be, because I want us to be number three not number 12, but we are getting there by God’s Grace.
“We have 30 girls in Uganda studying medicine and we hope to send more of our girls to other countries. We are discussing with Cuba to send more of our girls to study medicine because we have shortage of doctors in Kaduna, especially female doctors,” the governor added.
