UNESCO: Millions of youth of school!

Nigeria is one of the highest countries with out of school youths according to United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). The Secretary, Bayelsa State Universal Basic Education Board (BUSBEB), and member, National Implementation Committee on the integration of out of school boy-child education, Comrade Walton Liverpool stated this yesterday in Port Harcourt during the stakeholders meeting on the need assessment of the boy-child in Rivers State. Comrade Liverpool quoted the UNESCO report as saying that globally out of school youths constituted 61million of people involved in hawking, touting, street urchin in all parts of the country. Liverpool, who made the revelation during his speech at the meeting, explained that the Federal Government established the National Implementation Committee on the Integration of Out-of-School Boy-Child education with a view to take off these sets of youths from the streets and make them useful to themselves and the society at large. The essence of the programme , he continued, was to integrate out-of-school children from the South-South and South-East states into the basic education programme. The Bayelsa SUBEB Secretary noted that when the Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB) programme was lauched in 1999, only 8million youths were enrolled in the programme. “By 2009, however, it was discovered that about 24 million youth enrolled . This shows an improvement, but the problem is that our children are not properly integrated into the programme. This is the essence of the federal intervention on the out-of-school Boy-Child Education”0.0, he said. On his part, the team leader of the national implementation committee on the integration of out of school boy-child education, Prof Sam Ukala noted that the key challenges facing the UBE include socio-cultural, economic, and school- based factors. The socio- cultural factor, he said was poor or negative parental community attitude towards education, enormous priority on the acquisition of wealth as symbol of higher social recognistion and peer pressure and group influence. Others are uncertainty about childen’s inability to proceed to higher levels of learning or secure functional employment after completing basic education and the need to secure the boy-child’s future of engaging him to apprenticeship or other potential sources of livelihood, instead of formal education. Prof Ukala said the economic factors were high poverty levels in rural communities and parents’ inability to cater for children’s school needs such as school uniform, text books, school levies, writing materials, transportation fee and feeding It also includes the need for the boy-child to support family income by earning meager wages through menial jobs.