Abuja – The Federal Government will review the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act, to accommodate secondary education, Malam Adamu Adamu, the Minister of Education, has said.
Adamu, who featured on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) forum on Tuesday in Abuja, said the review had become necessary in order to achieve gender equity and parity in education.
“Attaining gender equity and then gender equality is a goal for this government.
“And what we are doing now; the Act of the Universal Basic Education is being looked into, with a view to amending it so that it will achieve gender parity, gender equity in the shortest possible time.
“And then if you look, there is UBEC for basic and junior secondary education; there is TETFund for tertiary education but there nothing for senior secondary school.
“So we are also trying to review the UBEC ACT so that it contains senior education for secondary schools.’’
NAN recalls that the UBE Programme, a nine-year basic educational programme, was launched and executed by the Federal Government to eradicate illiteracy, ignorance and poverty.
It also aims at stimulating and accelerating national development, political consciousness and national integration.
The UBE Act 2004 makes provision for basic education comprising of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Primary and Junior Secondary Education.
“The president made the promise that his government will recruit, train and employ 500,000 teachers because of his belief and the reality that we need to improve teacher quality and teacher quantity.
“Since he did that, the ministry has swung into action and made the cost what this is going to entail and I think the proposal is ready now for submission to the Federal Executive Council.’’
According to him, the ministry is collaborating with the Office of the Vice-President in the proposed recruitment.
The minister further said that the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria was close to 11 million, if the children of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) were taken into account.
He said that the Federal Government came up with idea of the school meal programme in order to attract and retain children in the schools.
Adamu said that the Federal Government was collaborating with State Universal Basic Education Boards in implementing the School Meal Programme.
According to him, the government is considering making a law so that any person who stops his child from school can be prosecuted. (NAN)