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United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef, has concluded plans to assist Nigeria improve her education sector by engaging with high level decision makers on the commencement of education planing process.
This is aimed at obtaining their inputs into areas that must be incorporated in the education sector.
Addressing about 12 states participating in a high level meeting on education sector planning organised by UNICEF in Enugu, Terry Durunian, Chief, Education. Said that UNICEF is supporting 25 states of the federation to plan their education sector plan, plan resources and how it will be raised and sustained.
Durnnian who was represented by Rosemary Nwangwu also said it is in recognition of the importance of planning to counter the mitigating factors against the sector in those states.
According to her Unicef was spurred to intervene in education planning because of the urgency made by the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs.
The SDGs had set 2030 as target for all countries, including Nigeria, to meet the education target.
Unicef noted that”without planning, the education sector is doomed to guess work and uniformed implementation of disorganised activities that only ends up wasting scarce resources”,
She said that the SDG challenges must be addressed to reach targets, ensuring that every child is in school. Some of the challenges facing the sector include of out-of-school children, children not learning anything at schools and lack of child friendly learning spaces in schools.
“where the state has a plan, it is easy to report achievement and win more support. Without a plan it is impossible to do so. An education sector plan would help a government to reporting easily on its accomplishments to the public and be exact about what government has done.”
Durnnian said that one of the expected results of the meeting is to strengthen collaboration and partnerships and work with states to achieve more results for children in education.
“Unicef plans to support these states to develop education sector plans that would sustain this vision and together with the states.
Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi who was represented by his chief of staff Festus Uzor, said the state was enthusiastic and its interest stimulated by the evidence-based planning that Unicef hampered on.
Ugwuanyi said “when you plan, you must plan with the right statistics and demography, we need to know the children of various ages. The data must be relevant and accurate for us to make service delivery.”
Noting that education is a right and not a privilege, Governor Ugwuanyi said the state regards education highly and has done a lot in the sector such as on recruitment of teachers and appendage personnel, provision of education support facilities and infrastructure. Those selected for the meeting were permanent secretaries, from various states, commissioner, members of state houses of assembly among others.
Regis Anukwuoji/Enugu
