Three-quarter of pupils in Nigerian primary schools lack adequate literacy and numeracy, according to a UNICEF assessment report.
The global agency’s Chief of Education in Nigeria, Saadhna Panday-Soobrayan, disclosed this yesterday, at the opening of the seminar, which was held at the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy seminar in Maiduguri, Borno State.
According to her, “Nigeria has a severe learning crisis with three out of four children being unable to read or to solve a simple math problem. This not only hobbles children’s opportunity to learn higher order skills but is also fuelling the out-of-school problem through high levels of dropout”.
The UNICEF official advised that: “If we want to solve the out-of-school problem, we must solve the quality problem in learning”. She noted that, “Nigeria is in the unenviable position of knowing what to do to improve learning and how to do it. The time is now to begin scaling it across all LGAs”.
The one-day seminar drew representation from the Federal Ministry of Education, UBEC, SUBEBs, and other government agencies, representation from development partners, academia, civil society, the youth sector, the private sector, and members of the media.
