Kayode Olanrewaju
President Muhammadu Buhari is expected to participate at the Global Education Summit on Financing Global Partnership for Education (GPE) 2021 to 2025, which will take place from July 28 to 29, 2021 in the United Kingdom.
The summit, which will bring together Heads of State and Governments as well as officials and youth leaders from Africa and other parts of the world, provides a platform for partners to chart a way forward toward transforming education systems through the exchange of concepts, experiences and best practices.
Meanwhile, the organisers have described the presence of President Buhari at the GPE summit as “a step in the right direction,” saying that the summit would obligate and task member countries to be committed more than to funding domestic education budgets by placing greater emphasis on improving learning outcomes and employing new techniques and methodologies which have been proven to yield better results for students.
“President Buhari’s physical attendance corroborates his commitment, promises and assurance to give more emphasis to education including the allocation of more resources to the sector under his administration.
“The President reiterated this promise in a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba Shehu when he received the proprietress, principal and students of a private school, Premier Pacesetters School, Daura, Katsina State, who visited him at his house on Thursday, July 22, 2021,” the organisers added.
Buhari’s presence at the GPE Summit, his mandate, promises and commitments translated into political will and action, they noted, could not have come too early for the critical situation of education in Nigeria.
Thus, they hinted that it is vital for the Federal Government to take leadership in the transformation of learning outcomes for the several millions of Nigerian children by giving them the desired quality education as the future of the country.
However, Lagos State’s EKOEXCEL basic education programme and the Basic Education Sector Transformation (EdoBEST) programme in Edo State are prime examples of the new approach to education delivery being championed by the GPE and its Co-Chairs.
Under the EKOEXCEL, tens of thousands of government teachers had been re-trained and are now being supported to teach in a digital and scientific way, while in Edo State, under the EdoBEST programme, which has just celebrated its third anniversary, more than 1,000 public primary schools across the state have benefitted in the basic education transformational change.
Towards this end, the Federal Government, it was said, was already taking positive steps that aligned with the GPE call to action towards the actualisation of education transformation in the country.
Based on the success already recorded by projects in the two states’ education sector, it is a surefire way for President Buhari’s administration to fulfill his administration’s campaign promises and answer the call to action as issued by President Kenyatta of Kenya, ahead of the GPE Summit for the governments to leverage technology-supported learning to improve equity in access to education and investing in strengthening the capacities of teachers in view of the critical role that they play in determining learning outcomes.
“This can be seen in recent activities of the Nigeria Institute of Policy and Strategic Study (NIPSS), a foremost Federal Government think tank. The NIPSS was tasked by the Federal Government to recommend an implementation strategy for basic education in 14 states of the federation for presentation to the President and EdoBEST is the model for this presentation.
“NIPSS partnered the Edo State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) with a view to formulating policy that will improve basic education in the country.
“The leader of NIPSS, Rear Admiral Leye Jaiyeola noted that EdoBEST has come up as a success story and we want to see what we can pick from EdoBEST that will become a practice for other states of the country, especially how to get things done,” a statement by the organisers added.