Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, said Nigeria was facing learning crisis, regretting that millions of children and young people were not developing even the basic skills required of them to escape poverty.
But he blamed the development on the distruction of schools and learning facilities in some parts of the country by insecurity,COVID-19 pandemic, among others.
The vice president spoke as Microsoft in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund,UNICEF, and the Global Partnership for Education,launched Nigeria Learning Passport,a digital platform aimed to raise the quality of education in the country.
The platform,designed for pre-primary, primary and secondary school learning,. provides access for children, youths and teachers to access a digitalised curriculum with learning materials in all core subjects for primary one to six besides and all junior and secondary school classes.
NLP, açcording to its handlers,is an online, mobile, and soon–to–be offline platform that would allow continuous access to quality education.
It is expected to reach three million learners in 2022 and 12 million learners in the country by 2025.
Speaking at the launch of the project,tagged “Nigeria Learning Passport,NLP, in Abuja,the vice president,said:”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.”
Represented by the Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, Osinbajo, who said Nigeria has recorded significant improvement in the education sector, however lamented that learning was still a big challenge.
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% to 61%, primary enrollment has increased by 5 million. The rate of out of school children has decreased by 10% from 42% to 32%,”he said.
Açcording to him,”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.”
He said,”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 provide and meet the need of every child. The NLP is an effective tool to ensure the continuity of learning through access to curriculum,” he said.
“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 provide and meet the need of every child. The NLP is an effective tool to ensure the continuity of learning through access to curriculum,” he said.
Minister of Education,Malam Adamu Adamu,who spoke at the occasion through the ministry’s acting permanent secretary, David Gender, called on private sector to key in to ensure sustainability of the project.
Adamu said the platform will be an effective tool to learning in the country.
The UNICEF representative in Nigeria, Mr Peter Hawkins,who spoke also,said the digital platform will 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, anywhere. Before COVID-19, access to quality education was already profoundly unequal Abo, we know that in Nigeria, 28 million children in school and NOT learning at the appropriate levels,”Hawkins said
He spoke further:”Sadly, learning is not always equipping our young people with the sits needed to excel in today’s world if we are to realize the ambition of SDG4, then we need to reimagine education, and the deployment of innovations like the Learning Passport will help to bring us there.
“With 65.6 million people aged 10-24, Nigeria has one of the largest young populations in the world representing an extraordinary opportunity for development and growth.”
