UBEC director applauds SBMC says initiative will reduce number of out of school children in Nigeria

The Deputy Director of Moblilization, Universal Basic Education (Kano), Alhaji Bello Kagara, has commended the School Based Management Committee stating that the initiative will boost education in the country.
Kagara stated this in Kano while addressing newsmen in a media workshop organized by UNICEF in conjunction with DFID stressing that the initiative will help to ensure that matters affecting education in the community are best handled by the members of the community.
He said: “The SBMC, to us, been school development agents, we feel we should be engaging them in several areas and one is to ensure the effective provision of adequate access to education of all children within their location. In that regard, the issue of out of school children is one of them.
“They are to mobilize parents to link all categories of opinion leaders and stakeholders in the education sector within their localities. If they do that, then they will be rest assured that out of school children will be a thing of history in this country.
“If only they perform their own roles together with the government in changing the attitude of the community towards schooling because nowadays, it is not about building schools. You can build schools in communities where you don’t have the right attitudes towards school, no one will be there but if the right attitude is there, even if there are no buildings, children will go to school.”
Kagara also stated that UBEC and the states cannot monitor the framework and activities of education in the states, only SBMC can do that and he stated that the issue of education in the country involves a participatory approach and also funding has always been a challenge in weathering the storm in the education sector.