The Federal Government says the National Personnel Audit is set to produce a data bank of pupils, students and personnel in public and private basic schools, while addressing the out-of-school challenge.
The Chairman, Universal Basic Education Commission Governing Council, Dr Muhammed Abubakar, stated this while inspecting the last phase of the exercise in Kaduna on Thursday.
Abubakar said the use of Geographical Information System and Global Position System for proper coordination of schools and their locations had added value to the exercise.
He disclosed that the information would be used to address both personnel and infrastructure needs of basic schools in the country.
According to him, the audit would give an authentic data on the schools that would allow the Federal Government and other stakeholders to know the number of children out of school in the country for proper planning.
He said the data indicating about 10. 5 million Nigerian children out of school was no longer reliable as the school feeding introduced by the present administration had attracted millions of children back to school.
Abubakar said the new data would also provide authentic information about teaching and non-teaching staff and their qualification as well as other personal information needed for proper training and other programmes.
According to him, the National Personal Audit is being conducted to cover all teachers, pupils and personnel in public and private education institutions in all states of the Federation and the FCT.
He said: “The exercise, which was last conducted in 2010, would provide first-hand information on categories of people in school and to ascertain the challenges with qualified and unqualified teachers.”
The News Agency Nigeria reports that UBEC is empowered by its 2004 Act to establish a Basic Education Data Bank and conduct research on basic education in Nigeria.
The last phase of the exercise, which began on June 3 in the North West geopolitical zone, is expected to round-off on June 30.
NAN reports that the chairman had inspected the exercise in different parts of Kaduna state and rounded off at the Queen Amina College in the city centre.