EGR, numeracy and life skills: Readying out-of-school Nigerian children for formal school

• In Event: Rolling-Out and Scaling-Up: The Insiders’ View of Reading Reform

Proposal

The five-year USAID-funded Northern Education Initiative Plus (the Initiative) project is strengthening the ability of Bauchi and Sokoto states to provide greater access to basic education—especially for girls and out-of-school-children (OOSC) —and to significantly improve reading outcomes for more than two million school-aged children and youth. The project is training and equipping about 45,000 teachers and learning facilitators in formal schools and Non-Formal Learning Centers (NFLCs), employing a holistic approach addressing a broad range of critical factors that affect learning, teaching, education systems management, parent participation and community engagement in and support for their schools. An evidenced-based intervention, the Initiative continuously monitors our program activities and assesses its delivery and results against established targets and milestones to improve project outcomes. Whenever possible, the initiative is bringing innovative, cost-effective Information Communication Technology (ICT) solutions to improve efficiency and increase service delivery.

The presentation will discuss the challenges faced in mobilizing the commitment and accountability particularly of local Government Education Authorities (LGEAs) to provide effective mother-tongue based early grade reading (EGR) teaching and learning to its pupils, and to deliver EGR, numeracy and life-skills to OOSCs and youth and whenever possible mainstreaming them into formal state education institutions. The Initiative is building LGEAs’ capacity to plan, budget for and administer their schools, support and supervise teachers, deliver high-quality teaching and learning materials, improve governance, transparency and accountability, and mobilize community involvement to bring more children into school and ensure that they can read. Many lessons have been learned from this experience, both in the terms of decentralized capacity, and central leadership, engagement and ownership of both the problem and the solution in the struggle states of Bauchi and Sokoto.

Author

• Margaret Lawani, Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC)