Executive Secretary, Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Hamid Bobboyi, says the disbursement of billions of naira to states for funding of basic education has not adequately rubbed off on learning achievements in schools.
He said this in Abuja on Wednesday at a two-day workshop on ‘Large Scale Assessment for Basic Education’ organised by the UBEC in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund.
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Bobboyi said the commission had put in place modalities to conduct a world-class assessment survey to ascertain learning outcomes in the nation’s basic education sector.
He said the 2021/2022 National Assessment on Learning Achievements in Basic Education would evaluate the impact of the multi-billion naira annual interventions at the basic education level.
He said the UBEC provided resources and that in a good year, apart from 2020 affected by COVID-19, dispensed billions every year “and a state gets a minimum of about N1.5bn and at least N3bn (as a whole) on a yearly basis.
“But at the end of the day you start wondering the money and resources going to these states and agencies that are implementing basic education. How much of it goes down to the level of the classroom and making a difference in teaching and learning?”
“We’ve dispensed textbooks to states and SUBEBs will wait for UBEC to pay for transportation of these books to various schools and most of the time the textbooks are locked up in the headmasters’ offices awaiting instructions from their ministries on what to do with them,” he said.
The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, represented by an official of the ministry, Mrs H. Lawal, described the planned large-scale learning assessment as a right step in the right direction.
UNICEF’s Country Representative, Peter Hawkins, tasked Nigeria with improving learning outcomes among pupils, describing the national learning assessment as critical to the future of every Nigerian child.
