Education minister set to re-organise UBEC, incentivise school enrolment

Adamu Adamu, Minister of Education has already promise to roll out a new action plan that presents practical steps geared towards addressing the burning issues confronting the educational sector.

The Minister at his first official acclimatisation meeting with directors in the Ministry of education identified numerous problems confronting the educational sector, which he pledged to address through articulated reforms and incentives to attract more out of school children back to school.

According to him, “The core problems of education in the country, while inter-related, vary from one level of education to the other. The crisis of underfunding, which gave birth to a whole series of other problems such as poor infrastructure for teaching and learning, absence of laboratory equipment for teaching and research, poor conditions of service for teachers, menace of brain drain”  On steps to reform the sector, the minister noted that his tenure will pursue the reformation of primary education through regulations and incentives. “We would review and enforce all regulations relating to staffing, capacity building and quality assurance” he said.

“We will incentivise enrolment into primary education by working with states and local governments to work out modalities for offering free meals to the pupils as well as working with the states and to enact laws that will make it mandatory for all school-age children to enroll”

The Universal Basic Education Commission would be re organised to respond to this emergency” Adamu stated.

In the next couple of days, after meeting with the heads of departments, agencies and parastatals, we would meet with state commissioners of education, representatives of trade unions in the education sector, representatives of parents and representatives of student’s union governments.

The purpose of the meetings is to build a strong coalition that ensures we work together harmoniously towards the successful implementation of the new government blue print that we are working on” Adamu added.

Meanwhile the Minister of state for education Anthony Anwuka in a separate interaction with newsmen said the Federal government would prioritise and address issues of quality teachers education as regards uplifting the standards of education in the country.

“Teaching in our basic education should not be all comer affairs. We must strive to forge a link between what is taught in colleges of education and our basic school level. These are some of the reforms we would be looking at as we strive to address some of the challenges steering us at face,” he said.

Harrison Edeh