It is a generally accepted norm across the globe that one of the drivers of economic growth and development is an educated population. Invest¬ment in such a venture by any government is the key to repositioning itself on the right growth trajectory and also alleviating poverty.
It is in the light of the im¬measurable contributions of education to human de¬velopment that the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) has organised the three-day seminar captioned ‘Transforming Education Through Partnerships for Global Competitiveness.’
The summit was formed in 1996 as a platform for public-private sector cooper¬ation on Nigeria’s economic development. The NESG was an offshoot of the Nigerian Economic Summits (NES), initiated in 1993, by the Er¬nest Shonekan-led Interim National Government.
This introduction is to en¬lighten briefly readers both at the national and global level of the transformative agenda going on in the edu¬cation sector through the NESG, a body saddled with the responsibility of putting the Nigeria education sector on a global economic arena.
Other mandate of the Group includes establish¬ment of permanent struc¬tured changes that would allow Nigeria develop cen¬tury skill in our children. It will also ensure private sector involvement in public education with a view to en¬suring that the Nigeria child is employable in the labour market. Furthermore, to pro¬duce highly skilled, globally competitive individual.
The summit has series of challenges before – such as the educational backward¬ness of the North child. It is glaring that right from time immemorial the South has always been ahead of the North in terms of provid¬ing quality education for its citizens. Therefore, bridging the education gap between the North and the South is most expedient.
The gap is worrisome and shows a wide inequality. One of the reasons for the Boko Haram insurgency is the failure of government to educate the Northern child. The most prevalent and per¬vasive case of this neglect is Borno State, North Eastern Nigeria, where majority of youth are undereducated making the area fertile for terrorist group like the afore¬mentioned insurgent group.
According to Renaissance Capital in a note released in May 7, 2013, which stat¬ed that Lagos State has the highest net primary school completion ratio in Nigeria, at 70.6 percent.
The report went further to expatiate that the popula¬tion living in South West was more likely to have com¬pleted primary school than its counterparts in the North.
The North Eastern states have low net primary school completion ratios. Less than 10 percent of the population in Adamawa, Taraba, Yobe, and Bauchi, in particular, have completed primary school. Kano has an alarm¬ingly low net primary school completion rate of 15 percent.
On the secondary school enrolment, the South again outperform the North as Ren Cap report revealed further that the South has higher secondary school attendance rates than the North. Lagos State has the highest net secondary school rate of 85 percent.
The North Eastern states (Bauchi, Taraba, Yobe and Borno) fair poorly, with at¬tendance rates of less than 10 percent.
Borno State example
Some officials of the Bor¬no State government have, however, identified harsh weather as the factor re¬sponsible for the education backwardness in the state.
According to them, the hot weather in the North is the reason why most Quranic schools adopt the culture of learning at night and early in the morning hours.
The Economic Summit
Group should call for the reorganisation of teaching and learning process to adapt to peculiar environment and situation of the people. This will help transform educa¬tion in the region that has been beset by political unrest fuelled by high illiteracy.
Numbers of children out of school are stagnating
According to the latest data from the UNESCO In¬stitute for Statistics (UIS), 61 million children of primary school age were out of school in 2010.
The global out-of-school figure had been on a decline over the previous 15 years, falling from 105 million in 1990. Progress was greatest immediately after the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000, when world lead¬ers committed to achieve Education for All by 2015. In addition, efforts to improve educational access for girls have paid off.
In 2010, girls accounted for 53 percent of out-of-school children, compared with 58 percent in 2000. Despite overall positive signs, the decline in out-of-school figures has slowed down since 2005.
Worriedly, the number of out-of-school children has remained at 61 million over the last three years. Much of this global stagnation is due to trends in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of children out of school has actually risen over the past three years, from 29 million in 2008 to 31 million in 2010.
Although enrolment has continued to rise, it has not kept pace with the increase in population.
Sub-Saharan Africa ac¬counts for one-half of all out-of-school children world¬wide and has the highest out of-school rate of all regions; almost one in four (23%) primary school-age children have either never attended school or left school without completing primary educa¬tion.
Out-of-school figures in sub-Saharan Africa have declined far less than in other regions, from 38 mil¬lion in 1990 to 31 million in 2010. By contrast, South and West Asia have made great gains over the past two de¬cades, reducing the number of out-of-school children by two-thirds from 39 million in 1990 to 13 million in 2010.
In 2010, the out-of-school rate in South and West Asia was 8 percent. The remain¬ing regions have significantly fewer children out of school: East Asia and the Pacific (7.0million), Arab States (5.0 million), Latin America and
