The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has advocated effective implementation of the safe school initiative to encourage enrollment and address out-of-school syndrome in the country.
Mr Tursha Rene, UNICEF Chief of Field Office, Bauchi, stated this while speaking with journalists on the sidelines of the two-day regional stakeholders engagement meeting, on Thursday in Gombe.
The participants were expected to deliberate and come up with strategies to address problems on out-of-school children, retention, transition and completion models in Bauchi, Gombe and Adamawa.
Rane said that safe school environment enables children to learn comfortably and put them on the path of promising future.
According to him, lack of safety in the school environment has the tendency of reducing school attendance, lower academic performances and increase drop-out rates.
He, therefore, urged governments at all levels to provide the needed safety in schools.
The meeting, he said would build collective commitment towards creating and implementing models to reduce out-of-school children in the states.
Also speaking, Prof. Aishatu Maigari, Gombe State Commissioner for Education, said that out-of-school children had been a pressing issue of discourse, and called for intensified efforts to combat the menace.
She said statistics indicated that the state has about 50,000 out-of-school children, with 50 per cent not completing primary education, 52 per cent not completing junior secondary school, and 51 per cent not completing senior secondary school.
Maigari said the state government had paid registration fees of external examinations for 19,000 indigent students, adding that the gesture would encouraged completion of school. (NAN)
