FG Partners UNICEF, Microsoft, GPE to Reach 12m Learners by 2025

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

The federal government has envisioned reaching 12 million learners in the country by 2025, after its partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Microsoft, and Global Partnership for Education (GPE) in the Nigeria Leading Passport (NLP) initiative.

This is just as Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said to ensure continuity of learning for all children in Nigeria, the country must change and reimagine the education sector.

Osinbajo stated this at the official launch of the programme in Abuja yesterday.

NLP, which is an online, mobile, and soon-to-be offline platform that would allow continuous access to quality education, is aimed at reaching three million learners in 2022 and 12 million learners in the country by 2025.

It is designed for pre-primary, primary and secondary school learning, providing access for children, youths and teachers to access a digitalised curriculum with learning materials in all core subjects for

primary one to six, and all junior and secondary school classes.

Osinbajo, who was represented at the event by the Minister of State for Education, Hon. Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, said there has been significant improvement in the sector, but access to learning remains a big challenge.

According to him, “Over the last decade, Nigeria has made great strides in improving access to education. In the last five years, pre-primary school participation has increased from 45 percent to 61 percent; primary enrollment has increased by five million. The rate of out-of-school children has decreased by 10 percent from 42 percent to 32 percent.

“These are phenomenal achievements, but access to school does not equate to learning. Nigeria is facing learning crisis. Millions of children and young people are not developing even the basic skills they need to break out of poverty due to distraction in schooling and learning by incessant insecurity, COVID-19 as well as constant attacks.

“To ensure continuity of learning for all children and the resilience of education systems to future shocks, we must change and reimagine the education sector.

“Deploying innovations that rethink the current methodologies, including new approaches to delivering education in ways that defy the digital divide and ensuring learning continuity in emergencies, has become imperative.

“This launch set the foundation for creating a system of education where digital technology will be used to transform the way that learning is provided to meet the need of every child. The NLP is an effective tool to ensure the continuity of learning through access to curriculum.”

On his part, the UNICEF representative in Nigeria, Mr. Peter Hawkins, said the platform can be quickly deployed, customised and scaled up nationally, including in low connectivity areas.

He noted that the digital platform would address the over 89 per cent of learners who do not have access to computers in the home and over 82 per cent of learners who do not have access to the internet in Nigeria.

“It is also an effective tool to accelerate national reforms to make quality learning opportunities available to more children, anytime and anywhere. Before COVID-19, access to quality education was already profoundly unequal, but we know that in Nigeria, 28 million children in school are not learning at the appropriate levels,” he stated.

Also speaking, the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, said the platform would be an effective tool to learning in the country.

The minister, who was represented by the acting Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, David Gende, urged the private sector to key in and ensure sustainability of the project.