No less than 403,282 vulnerable, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and out-of-school children have improved their reading skills through the Strengthening Education in North East Nigeria (SENSE) with support from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Adamawa and Gombe states.
The five-year project was aimed at enhancing pupils reading skills from Primary 1 to 3 through the use of their mother tongue and also improves primary school teachers to strengthen capacity to teach learners in the Hausa language.
The USAID/Nigeria Education Officer, Lynda Ashalu, said SENSE has contributed to USAID’s objectives of improving learning outcomes in Nigeria by providing access and delivery of quality early grade reading intervention to more than 400,000 learners across 355 schools, training over 9,700 teachers, and providing capacity building training for 660 state government education managers in Adamawa and Gombe states.
She noted that a necessary and key component for scaling and sustaining successful literacy programs involves the use of local and community champions such as parents and caregivers, religious leaders, community leaders, and school leaders.
She explained that in other to achieve the aforementioned, the SENSE activity worked with school-based management committee members to build their capacity to support teaching and learning in their schools.
“Today we will formally handover the SENSE activity’s teaching and learning materials to USAID Nigeria’s newest education activity-Leveraging Education Assistance Resources in Nigeria (LEARN) to Read will scale up technical assistance and infuse global best practices for the teaching and learning of early grade reading for primary one-two learners across multiple states.” She stated.
Speaking during the SENSE close the ceremony, Chief of Party SENSE, Dr. Audu Liman, said the lack of local language teaching and learning materials to teach reading, the poor early grade teaching skills of lower primary teachers as well as the lack of a data-driven teacher professional development strategy to improve teacher capacity.
He reiterated the lack of parental engagement in teaching and learning at schools as well as poor education managers’ skills in providing supportive supervision to teachers.
Liman explained that SENSE has supported the establishment of 39 Teacher Resource Centers (TRCs) across 20 LGAs in Adamawa and 11 in Gombe state.
He said at the education system level, SENSE developed the capacity of 33 local government Education Secretaries and 659 government education managers to implement a data-driven teacher professional development program that is supporting teachers to deliver quality early grade reading through effective decision-making regarding education activities in their local education authorities.
Acknowledging the value of effective community-level monitoring and advocacy he said the activity also strengthened the capacity of 335 school-based management committee (SBMC) members to support teaching and learning in their schools.
A beneficiary, Peace Luka, said the SENSE project has broadened her horizon because as a teacher, she was able to make use of the resource center where she gets free materials to learn more about how to teach her pupils.
Another beneficiary, a teacher from Ganye Abdullahi Hammantukur, said all his life as a teacher, he never known what a resource center looks until during the USAID/SENSE intervention adding that he was opportune to make use of a resource center which has enhanced his capacity immensely.
