Poverty Major Cause Of Increasing Number Of Out Of School Children In Gombe-Official By Kalshingi H Jedidah
Poverty has identified as the major reason of children out of school in Gombe state. This was revealed recently during the presentation of reports on dissemination of out of school children organised by the State Universal Basic Education Board SUBEB, and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Funds in Gombe.
Malam Ibrahim Ahmed, from the Federal Collage of Education (FCE) Gombe and a resource person at the occasion, who presented the reports stated that the survey conducted in some selected schools of five local government areas in the state and revealed that parents could not afford the cost of education.
Ahmed said that the exercise identified a total of 18,455 children being out of school and 31,562 children are currently schooling in the communities.
He said the mapping exercise was conducted in 179 communities with focus on five focus Local Government Ares of Balaga, Dukku, Kwami, Nafada and Yamaltu/Deba.
Adding that a total number of 11,252 households were identified in the targeted communities with 12,918 children aged 3-5 and 18,644 children age 6-11 are currently schooling in the communities.
He further explained that 7,331 children aged 3-5 and 4,089 children aged 6-11 were not enrolled in school and that according to the findings, major reason for out of school was that parents could not afford the cost 31.4 per cent, Distance 11 per cent, while preference to Qur’anic education fell at 11 per cent and Lack of early child are development education 9.2 per cent.
He recommended that government should to provide conducive learning environment that were child friendly, SUBEB and LGAs to encourage community driven enrolment campaign to attract both new and out of school children back to school.
Earlier in his remarks, Alhaji Mohammed Lawal, Focal Officer UNICEF said that the aims of the exercise were to improve the avenue for evidence base impact of quality education, to also develop action that will used to target out of school children back to school .
