- Identify gaps in literacy, numeracy
From Timothy Olanrewaju, Maiduguri
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and three northeastern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe are discussing challenges of literacy and numeracy among school children in the area.
Addressing representatives of the three states and other participants at the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy seminar on yesterday in Maiduguri, UNICEF Chief of Education in Nigeria, Saadhna Panday-Soobrayan said the discussion
“We are convened here to talk about the scale of the challenge with learning in North East Nigeria but more than that, to share with you some local grown highly effective models on how to solve the problem,” she disclosed.
She said Nigeria has a severe learning crisis with three out of four children being unable to read or solve a simple math problem.
“This not only hobbles children’s opportunity to learn higher order skills but is also fueling the out of school problem through high levels of drop out. So if we want to solve the out of school problem, we must solve the quality problem in learning,” she said.
UNICEF is collaborating with government of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states as well as other development partners for over five years on child literacy and numerical learning.
UNICEF Chief of Field Office (North East) Phuong Nguyen said they have made efforts to create various teaching and learning modules on literacy and numeracy. She maintained there must be good infrastructure to sustain the efforts
“We’ve got to make sure we have quality infrastructure in place and quality teachers, teachers who know how to teach, how to read,” she explained.
She said UNICEF wants to ensure every child has books to read so that they can go home with their books and practice with their parents.
She appealed to the governments of the three states to sustain and step up their collaboration for the literacy and numeracy programme.