By Muhammad Lawal
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) says it will soon embark on verification of public schools in Kebbi State to ascertain areas of needs.
The NBS State Officer, Malam Sa’idu Sale, made this known to newsmen in Birnin Kebbi on Wednesday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the exercise is a needs assessment to ascertain areas of needs in public schools under the Federal Government’s programme, Better Education Service Delivery for All (BESDA).
Sale said: “Of all the 17 states the exercise is expected to be carried out, Kebbi State has the highest number of schools with 7,217 public schools.
“I want to assure the Executive Chairman, Kebbi State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) that nothing is going to be left unturned. We are going deploy our staff to all the 21 local government areas of the state to do justice to this exercise.”
He explained that the staff of the bureau would undergo a five-day rigorous training to scale up the calibre of service to deliver during the exercise.
The state officer however observed that the schools were not evenly distributed across the state, as some local government areas have more schools than others.
According to him, each local government will be manned by two staff, adding that in the event the personnel deployed to an LGA with fewer schools are through with their assignment, they will be moved to the next LGA to assist.
“All the 7,217 schools across the state will certainly be covered to come up with accurate and just results,” he assured.
On his part, the Executive Chairman, Kebbi State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Prof. Suleiman Khalid, said the verification was sequel to the submission by the board on what it did under BESDA.
He said: “The independent verification agent for this is the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS); they are here to verify all activities we have conducted and things we have put in place to reduce to the barest minimum the number of out-of-school and other things we have put in place to strengthen the system.
“For the purpose of this programme, that is the Non-formal Learning Programme, we have already engaged the services of 15,900 facilitators and they will work for nine months, they will work to teach 750,000 learners in Kebbi.
“We have already made provision for teachers of these learners that we have recruited. They are difffent from the regular formal schools, these are non-formal learning centres and we have three categories of Intergareted Primary Schools, Girl Child Centres and Nomadic Child Centres.
“We have made provision for this programme and it is for nine months, at the end of the nine months period, these learners will be examined and evaluated and those who passed we will mainstream them.
“We plan to mainstream 20 per cent of the whole of these learners into the regular primary schools and it is then that we expand on the existing phase classrooms, we actually expand on the number of teachers that will handle this increasing number of children looking for a space to access basic education.”
He expressed optimism that at the end of the programme, the state would get handsome financial that would be used to build more schools and recruit more teachers.(NAN)
