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- UNICEF says 275,500 children benefit
From Timothy Olanrewajuju, Maiduguri
British High Commission Senior Advisor on Education, Mr Ian Attfield said a special learning programme for children affected by violent in the Northeast being implemented by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is improving education of young people in the area.
Attfield who visited some primary schools in Maiduguri, Borno State Capital on Tuesday to assess the effectiveness of the Partnership for Learning for All in Nigeria-Education in Emergency (PLANE-EIE) programme, said pupils are catching up with the special learning programme.
“There is improvement in the learning of the children from what I have seen. I am very pleased about this progress. We try to extend some opportunities to some of the children that have missed out of school due to the conflict and violence in the northeast,” he explained in an interaction with journalists at the Mohammed Aji Lawan Primary School Maiduguri
UNICEF Education Specialist Borno Office, Mustapha Shehu, said a total of 275, 500 children in Borno and Yobe states benefitted from the programme.
Shehu said the programme was designed to give opportunity to children who could not identify letters, words and read sentences despite their level having missed out of school due to displacement caused by violence in the area.
He said the programme was funded by PLANE project of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Education Cannot Wait. He said the programme started since December 2021.
He said the children usually take two hours of the routine class environment to hold a group learning session outside the classroom where they identify letters, words, sentences and paragraph with the aid of specialized teachers who were trained by Unhcef for the purpose.
Head teacher of the school, Ngare Bukar said 50 prevent of the pupils were orphaned by the insurgency in the area. He said the pupils are usually encouraged to attend school because of the interactive nature of the teaching method: Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL).
