From Scholastica Onyeka Makurdi
To scale up access to education for every Benue child, the state’s team of Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP) has commenced a two-day registration drive in all the 23 local government areas of the state.
The Director at the Benue State Ministry of Education in charge of BESEVIC, Mr. Francis Dera, disclosed this in Makurdi at the end of a one-day refresher training of the registrants held at the Benue State E-Learning/Virtual Education, ICT Resource Centre, BESEVIC.
Recall that UNICEF and the Federal Ministry of Education, last year, launched the NLP, an online, mobile, and offline digital learning platform that enables continuous access to 15,000 curriculum-aligned learning and training materials in local languages for learners, teachers, and parents, to bridge the access to quality learning opportunities in the country.
Dera said the registration exercise would ensure that the state fully took advantage of the NLP to tackle the menace of illiteracy and out-of-school children in the state.
The Director who commended UNICEF for piloting the quest to get learners on the platform in order to take education to the hard-to-reach communities and persons, said the State Team put up the refresher training “to enable our people, who had already been trained, to go outside and see how they can improve on our registration status on the NLP.”
He explained that the 23-member State Team comprised the representative of the State Ministry of Education Headquarters, staff of BESEVIC, staff from Benue SUBEB, which are the Director Quality Assurance and Director Planning, Research and Statistics.
Dera said further: “We also have the Director Planning from the State Science and Technical Education Board and another Director from the State Teaching Service Board.
“After the refresher we assigned each person to a local government in the state. They are expected to spend two days on the field to conduct and supervise the registration exercise.
“When we go out there we will form groups in each LGA and we intend to have like five groups each. Once we get to a centre in the LGAs, we will be working with the Education Secretary, the Area Education Officers and the Benue State E-Learning/Virtual Education ICT Resource Centre, Desk Officers at the LGAs.
“At the LGAs our team would liaise with these officers and create clusters. And then they will train Head Teachers at this cluster level. The Head Teachers will thereafter go out and assist in the registration. The state team will supervise and also carry out the registration exercise themselves.
“So that at the end of the day we will capture learners who are registered on NLP; that is the essence of what we are doing.
“Each of the person going out there is targeting a minimum of 1,000 registrants per LGA. So by the time they get back we are looking at a minimum of 23,000 registrants from the 23 LGAs, but we are looking beyond that.
“Our projection is that by December, we should be able to exceed the 35,000 that is allotted to us in Benue state,” he said.