Youth tasks Gombe Govt on 600,000 out- of-school children

Youths in Gombe state have called on the present administration to reverse the negative narrative of over 600, 000 of children that out- of -school in the state.

The Nigeria youth parliament speaker, Mubarak Mijiyawa, stated this during a press conference in Gombe to commemorated the 2019 Day of the Africa Child.

The programme was organized by Gombe state Primary Education Board in collaboration with High Level Women Advocacy, (HILWA) with support by UNICEF Bauchi field office.

He said the reasons behind the increasing number of out of school children is inadequate funding, poor infrastructure, low quality of teachers and insecurity.   

According to him, the current education indication of the state from 2017 to 2018 annual school census and National Education Development Survey 2015 indicated that 51.1 percent of children never attended school and 12.4percent cannot read and less than 24 percent of school age children attend pre-primary school.

 He said: “The female net and gross enrolment rate of girl in primary school are 6.3 percent and 13.8 respectively, the gross enrolment rate of girls in primary one stand at 45 percent the female literate constitute 18.74 percent of the total population in the state, average girls gross attendance rate for primary school is 47 percent and 14 percent for JSS, the transition rate from primary 6 to JSS one for girls is 37 percent and67 percent from JSS to SSS.

“The qualified teacher pupil ration for primary in the state stand at one teacher to 56 pupils and for JSS one to 20 and female teachers in primary schools constitute only 38 out of the number of teachers in the state and about 8 million children are out of schools, across 10 states in Nigeria, and the affected states have an average enrolment rate of only 57 per cent.

The Youths urged state governors, parliamentarians, policymakers and other influential persons in a mass effort to get commitments to provide quality education for children in the country.

He said the engagement “seeks to secure commitments from national and state governments to prioritise children’s rights to education in their governance agenda, including through budgeting, in their states and at the national level.

“This engagement creates an opportunity for Nigerian youth to advocate to policy and decision makers and urge them to commit resources to education, without which the substantial number of out-of-school children in Nigeria will not be reduced.

“The action is calling for improved school infrastructure, a massive enrolment campaign to bring all children to school, and targeted investments to ensure an uninterrupted 12 years of schooling for girls.”

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