Oyo, Adamawa and Katsina States are to benefit from a $123 .8 million support grant by the World Bank Global Partnership for Education (GPE) depending on how much each of the states is able to attract resources during the implementation of the project.
To this effect, World Bank has advised the three states to learn from each other and focus on results by achieving certain milestones to get the grants.
A World Bank Education Economist, Martin De Simone, stated this on Tuesday at the opening of a three-day Implementation Support Mission for the BESDA AF-TEES program organised by the Oyo State Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in collaboration with the world bank and Global Partnership for Education (GPE ), at the University of Ibadan, Oyo State.
De Simone emphasized the significance of high-level political commitment and robust implementation capacity from state and federal governments in ensuring the success of the Better Education Service Delivery For All Additional Financing- Transforming Education System at States (BESDA AF-TEES) programme.
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The world bank expert charged Oyo state government to move at a fast pace in actualisation of the objectives of the program which he said would end by October 2025.
He said: “Oyo state is one of the three states for the project that we support. Financed by the Global Partnership for Education GPE and the world bank, the program focuses on improving basic education in three states; Oyo, Adamawa and Katsina States.”
“We are here in Oyo to hear about the updates on how the project is doing, identify some of the bottlenecks and determine some of the next steps to ensure that the project is successful towards its end in October, 2025.”
On how it would help improve the quality of education in the country, Simone said: “the project focuses on some of the key areas that have remained as bottlenecks to access to quality education. One of the main constraints in Nigeria is the availability of infrastructure, there are simply not enough schools for all the children that need to get education and even where they are, maybe the infrastructure is not ideal or not the right facilities to address them.”
“So, one of the critical interventions is to improve infrastructure and expand the number of classrooms. The second is to improve the quality of teaching and learning.”
In his address, the Chief Financial Officer, Global Partnership for Education (GPE) Padraig Power noted that though the program had a challenging and delayed start, he expressed optimism that the programme will be a success assuring that the GPE was prepared to provide the necessary fund to support the project.
The National Project Coordinator , GPE- TEES project, Dr. Mrs Folake Olatunde David who is also the Director, Basic Education, Federal Ministry of Education, said the project would help in improving the quality and access to education and help transform the system.
She noted that fund is being provided as support to address issues of out- of – school children , learning outcomes by providing inclusive quality education for all children, improving the quality of teaching and learning and also ensuring all children are provided for in basic education including children with special needs.
Earlier in his address, the Oyo State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Prof. Soliu Adelabu, said the project is designed to accommodate all children of school age irrespective of their socio economic background.
He said the state is making efforts at recording 100 percent literacy rate in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 7 & 14 Education For All Policy
“In the last administration of governor Seyi Makinde , 20 percent of out-of school children in Oyo state were back to school, we are working around ten percent now and we want that to be reduced drastically,” he said.
In his comments, the Oyo State Coordinators of Global Partnership for Education (GPE), Dr. Tunde Odekunle, assured that with the program, over a million children of school age will be moped from the streets and returned to school while teachers would also be trained to teach the children.
He said the three states meet every six months to access the level of achievements in each of the states on the project and to exchange ideas on how best to implement the project to achieve result saying that it is the turn of Oyo State having had a similar meeting in Adamawa and Katsina States.
Similarly, the Katsina State Commissioner for Education who was represented by the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mrs Aishat Umar, said the Katsina state government is committed to providing maximum support at ensuring the successful implementation of the project.
