President Bola Tinubu is rebooting the country’s education sector with creative initiatives that will introduce a fresh breath of air to the industry.
This is contained in a statement issued by the Tinubu Media Support Group (TMSG) Chairman, Emeka Nwankpa, and Secretary, Dapo Okubanjo in Abuja.
The group said Tinubu’s initiatives in the education sector could be likened to building blocks for a progressive and modern education system.
“The education sector is one that the President Tinubu’s administration had since inception been quietly reviving for utmost efficiency in the last year.
“Even the perennial agitation of tertiary institution’s workforce has been on the decline, resulting in peace on campuses, calls for strikes are also dying down,” the group said.
It attributed the development to the Federal Government’s decision to remove universities and tertiary institutions from the Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) payment platform.
It noted that the IPPIS since its introduction in 2006, had been a source of acrimony between university unions and various administrations.
“But what may end up cementing Tinubu’s place in history in this sector, is the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELF) which started only a few days ago.
“But has received well over 60,000 applications from students of Federal Government institutions,” it added.
It explained that Tinubu had delayed the take-off of the interest-free student loan scheme to ensure it also covered students who may be more interested in skills acquisition than university education. It said the ultimate intention of the move was to guarantee sustainable higher education and functional skill development for Nigerian students and youths.
The group added that the goal was to ensure that indigent students do not drop out of school due to financial constraints.
“As for funding, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFUND, made its highest ever disbursement of ₦643.4bn to tertiary institutions since inception on President Tinubu’s watch.
“With Colleges of Education getting a minimum of ₦1.3bn while individual polytechnics and universities received ₦1.6billion and ₦1.9billion respectively.
“This quantum of funds improves teaching, research, and overall development of our tertiary institutions, staff beneficiaries can partake in conferences locally and internationally.
“It is also used to fund the writing of textbooks and also cater for payments of honorarium to supervisors in education related programmes,” the group noted.
It added that the fund, therefore, had a major impact on the development of tertiary institutions, staff, and students. It noted that the Tinubu administration was also looking at addressing issues of out-of-school children and the need to boost secondary education.
The TSMG said like Tinubu, it considered the situation of out-of-school children unacceptable, noting that the president had approved system-wide policies to reduce the number of school-age children roaming the streets.
It noted that Vice-President Kashim Shettima was recently in Bauchi where he launched a multi-year Accelerated Senior Secondary Education Programme (ASSEP).
It said the programme was to pave the way for the overhaul of school infrastructure and the facilitation of modernised curricula and an integrated virtual learning technology.
“The initiative is a major policy drive to bridge the gaping educational divide in the country, with the North-East region as the starting point.
“We also know that 10,000 teachers and educators have been trained in preparation for the establishment and launch of 37 smart schools, one in each state and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT),” it stated.
It added that a National Education Repository and Data Bank was also in the works to collect, collate, and warehouse all education records from 1932 through a dedicated website. It said there was already approval from President Tinubu for a comprehensive national census of schools, teachers, and students in the country.
This, the TSMG said, was to address the lack of coordinated data critical for effective educational sector planning. It expressed optimism that such data bank and census if in place, would go a long way to enhancing decision making and policy formulation.
This, it added was especially because data collated would aid evidence-based planning and help identify areas where improvement was required.
