By Temi Ohakwe
UNICEF says its priority in 16 states of Nigeria is to enhance the education of 12million pupils affected by the COVID 19 pandemic.
UNICEF Education Specialist for Continuing Learning /Alternate Home and Community-Based project, Yetunde Oluwatosin, said this will be achieved via the 15Million USD response grant from the Global Partnership on Education, (GPE) for COVID-19 safe school reopening across Nigeria.
Speaking on the project, Oluwatosin said the Community Based programme is a component of the GPE /Nigerian government response support agenda to COVID-19 pandemic in the Education sector.
According to her, “the primary purpose of the 9months project is to ensure that children continue to learn through access to diverse remote learning programmes as appropriate for each context to meet the needs of each child including the most vulnerable and specifically to ensure that education system recovers from school closure as well as implement safe school operation”
On immediate focal areas of the project, Oluwatosin stated that the scheme targets 500,000 learners, 1300 schools and 8500 teachers in Ebonyi, Benue and Enugu States.
She explained that activities such as community level reading and numeracy hubs, psycho-social support programmes and delivery of critical health education on sanitation and hygiene sensitisation on gender based violence, formed the basis of the project.
Catherine Osho, UNICEF implementing agent and Chief Programme officer with the Excellent Community Education Welfare Scheme, ECEWs, said the GPE project creates opportunity for children who were not reached during the lockdown period to catch-up with learning.
Osho stated that the 9months project targets to establish community reading and numeracy hubs for 21,767 pupils in two local governments of Aninri and Isiuzo LGAs of Enugu State.
According to her, “the project strategy is to build 964 teachers capacity in the two LGAs to provide psychosocial support to the children”.
Speaking on the take off of the project in Enugu State, ECEWS State Program Officer Ufiem Donatus Anya , disclosed that 20 Master trainers from Aninri and Isiuzo L.GAs , have been fully trained on the provision of Psycho-social support , and another 20 were trained on Reading Hub and facilitating RANA tools for the pupils in the two LGAs.
Ufiem stated that 8,885 pupils are to be reached in Aninri LGA while 12,882 pupils will be supported under the programme established to breach the gap created in learning by the COVID19 pandemic.
He hinted that ECEWS has conducted master training programme for the communities in the areas of focus specifically on school enrolment drive, an exercise he said has started yielding results.
According to him, “prior to our program, SBMC in these two LGAs do not have record, hence documentation of events was not in place, we have conducted a pre-test module for evaluation before the training takes place to ascertain what the members of the SBMC actually know”.
“ECEWs have influenced the SBMC to increase the number of days they meet, they now write to their Local government chairmen” he added.
On sustainability and expansion of the project, Ufiem revealed that ECEWs intend to create a model that the state can adopt, adding that this will facilitate expansion of the project to the remaining 15 LGAs in Enugu State.
According to him, “the GPE Continued learning project in Enugu is being implemented with some challenges such as the hindrance of natural terrain in areas like Eha Amufu communities in Isiuzor LGA”.
The ECEWS Programme Officer added that the project intends to fully train 559 teachers to be fully equipped with functional 153 reading hubs in both Aninri and Isiuzo LGAs.
The Enugu State Universal Basic Education Board Chairman represented by Chigbo Caroline , told Voice of Nigeria that the State government will meet with the UNICEF and ECEWS to further replicate the project in the remaining 15 local governments of State.
