Federal Government has secured $500 million support from the World Bank to deal with the challenges of adolescent girls in the country who are out or have never been to school.
Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, who made this known in Abuja said the Bank’s facility was secured to ensure girls were taken off the streets, trained and financially empowered to enable them live normal lives.
He explained that the full implementation of the project under the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Employment programme (AGILE) would begin this year.
Mallam Adamu Adamu, who also said the phenomenon of adult illiterates was equally disturbing, observed that the children of illiterate parents were 80 per cent more to be out of school than the children of the educated.
He disclosed that the Federal Government was working on an instrument that would also make it an offence for any adult illiterate not to be undertaking any form of learning, saying “today’s illiterates will breed tomorrow’s out-of-school children.”
The minister said based on realisation that one adult illiterate has the potential of reproducing an average of five out-of-school children, the Federal Government had also approached the phenomenon frontally.
According to him, in addition to development of a curriculum in basic literacy and numeracy in English, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba, a code of conduct for learning centres in adult and non-formal education in English, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba, has been developed.
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