The Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission UBEC Dr. Hamid Bobboi says the federal government is working tirelessly to address the challenges of the transition of the girl child from primary school to junior secondary school across the Nation.
Bobboi stated this during the northern regional consultative meeting with adolescent girls on transition junior Secondary school organized by UBEC in collaboration with UNICEF held in Kano.
He said the rate at which the number of girl child reduces during the transitional period from primary school to junior secondary school was very alarming, hence all necessary steps being taken to address the challenge.
Dr. Hamid Bobboi explained that a research has been conducted on the disturbing issue, stressing that the regional meeting will fine-tune modalities of addressing the problem.
“The junior secondary schools we have are still not enough to cater for the school-going age population, you need to ensure that every child has a junior secondary school at least three kilometers radius from where he is living, so we are in a deficit of about 22 thousand junior secondary Schools “
He said a lot of initiatives were in the pipeline to curtail the challenge.
” We are holding this consultative meeting with the children and stakeholders to hear their challenges and look for a way forward”
In his remark, the senior education officer of UNICEF Mr. Micheal Banda applauded the commitment of UBEC in demonstrating its will to uplift the standard of education.
He noted that recent statistics reveal that over a 13 million children are out of school in Nigeria, stressing that the majority of these out-of-school children were girls, especially during the transition from primary to junior secondary schools.
” This is our collective responsibility to address this challenge so that we will have a bright future for our children who will be leaders of tomorrow”
Earlier the acting executive secretary state universal basic education board Alhaji Kabiru Ahmad said the meeting was very timely.
He added that the kano state government had already implemented free and compulsory primary and secondary education which was geared toward addressing the transition challenge.
The participating state includes Kano, Jigawa, Kogi, and Kaduna.
Abdullahi Jalaludeen
