Nasarawa To Enforce Compulsory Basic Education For Children

By Ayodele Oni

Nasarawa state government has taken a bold move to bridge the gap of the state backwardness in education, as it threatened to prosecute parents that fail to enrol their children in school.

Executive Chairman, of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Kassim Mohamed-Kassim, disclosed this at a press conference on Tuesday in Lafia as part of activities preparatory to the Thursday’s Education Summit organised by the board.

He emphasised that basic education is a fundamental right of every child in the state, not a privilege and vowed to enforce it to ensure that no child is left behind.

The Chairman explained that the board has decided to embark on a massive enlightenment campaign through town hall meetings and the mass media to sensitize parents on the need to send their wards to school.

To this end, he revealed that the board has purchased seven buses for sensitisation to all the nooks and crannies of the 13 Local Government Areas (LGAs) to enlighten parents and guardians on the need to enrol their children and wards in school.

The chairman further stated that meetings would be organised in every LGA for herders, other community leaders and parents whose children and wards were mostly out of school.

“We will let them realise that they must compulsorily enrol their children and wards in schools, or face sanctions.

“Parent that fail to send their children to school will face legal action in line with the existing law,” he added.

On the summit, Kassim-Mohammed said the event would bring together stakeholders comprising educationists, government officials, traditional rulers, policy makers, parents, teachers, among others from the International, National and Local scenes.

He noted that the stakeholders would provide solutions to education-related challenges, help improve quality, share best practices and innovations to enhance teaching and learning outcomes in the state.

He explained that the board under him had discovered so many challenges, hampering the quality of education in the state.

He listed some of the challenges to include; substandard school structures, lack of chairs, inadequate teachers, truancy by staff and lack of proper placement of teachers, among others

“Already we have taken a lot of steps towards addressing the identified problems to reposition and improve the standard of basic education in the state.

“We reported the outcome of our findings to Gov. Abdullahi Sule, and he has approved the purchase of 30,000 chairs to be distributed to schools to ensure that every child is comfortable to learn.

“We have redeployed 1,900 teachers that were hitherto working as administrative staff back to the classroom, and about 1000 would soon be deployed to fill in the shortage of teachers in our schools,” Kassim-Mohammed added.