By Gom Mirian
Nigeria is reportedly experiencing severe learning crisis with three out of four children in basic education unable to read with meaning or solve simple mathematics problems.
Against this backdrop, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other Stakeholders on Wednesday harped on the need for political will and financial resources to ensure a massive improvement in literacy and numeracy in the next five years.
At an event to promote awareness of FLN models and lessons from the implementation of foundational learning programmes in northern Nigeria in Abuja, experts say literacy is a problem in Nigeria that needs the involvement of all.
The event was convened by UNICEF and USAID Leveraging Education Assistance Resources in Nigeria (LEARN) to present the findings of these evaluations and discuss the conditions necessary to facilitate the upscaling of evidence-informed Foundation Learning and Numeracy initiatives.
The UN agencies also said that over the past five years, several interventions; Reading and Numeracy Activity (RANA), Early Grade Reading (EGR) and Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) and others have been trialed in Nigeria to identify what works in early grade reading.
He added that several independent evaluations/assessments have shown to be highly effective to improve reading and numeracy outcomes in formal and non-formal settings and in humanitarian and development contexts in Nigeria.
Chief of Education, UNICEF Nigeria, Saadhna Pandy-Soorbrayan, at the event told the Africa Health Report, AHR, that Nigeria has a twin crisis in education, with the first being a massive out-of-school problem and the second a massive learning crisis.
According to her, three out of four children in Nigeria cannot read a simple sentence or solve a simple math problem and that is a massive problem.
She said: “If we want to develop human capital to power the economy and society. And so, what we’ve been doing over the past five years is testing various interventions to solve this crisis, this learning crisis. And what we’ve identified is that a couple of things are important.
“We’ve got to train our teachers; we’ve got to have the right materials available. Teachers must know how to do assessments, and the community needs to value the teachers to be able to solve these problems.
“We’ve subjected these pilots to independent assessment evaluation, and they’ve been shown to be very effective to improve literacy and numeracy rates.
“And so, what we are doing at the seminar today is presenting those findings and we are having a conversation with the government, with civil society, with development partners, with the media, etc.
“To push out that evidence to say we have it in our hands. Now, the task for the next five years is to scale the successful interventions across Nigeria.
“We really should aim in the next five years to see a massive improvement in literacy and numeracy. What it needs is a political will. It needs human resources and it needs financial resources, which already exist in the system, but they need to be redirected to things that we know work.”
She further lamented that Nigeria is spending only 1.2% of its GDP on education while the international benchmark is 4% to 6%.
She said even the little money available is not being spent well, and added that 28% is being spent on higher education when children in primary school cannot read, write and count.
“So, we need to flip the pyramid in Nigeria, significant investment needs to be made in primary school when you do not have universal enrollment, almost 45 to 50% of the education budget should be spent on basic education.
“Right now, you are spending about 29% of the budget. So, we need to get the budget right. We need to increase the volume of expenditure but we need to improve the efficiency of expenditure,” she added.
Also, Muntaka Mukhtar, Education Specialist, UNICEF Kano Field Office advocated the provision of sufficient learning materials including works books to learners, to address deficiencies in teacher competencies and teacher shortages, among others.
On her part, Grace Malgwi, Senior Pupils Teachers Performance Advisor, LEARN to Read emphasized the need for structured pedagogy.
She also stressed the need for an established system of teacher professional development, coaching, and mentoring support model to ensure proper learning is transferred to the children.
