By Felix Khanoba
The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) says it has put in place modalities to conduct the 2022 personnel audit of early childhood education centres, primary and junior secondary schools in the country.
Executive Secretary of the Commission, Dr Hamid Bobboyi, made this known on Thursday in Abuja during a high level consultative meeting on the 2022 National Personnel Audit (NPA) of all basic education institutions in Nigeria.
He lamented that dearth of data on basic education has remained a major challenge, saying education planners and decision makers have had to make do with data that are not up-to-date or are outrightly falsified.
While saying the exercise would enable the Commission collect accurate data on school enrolment, number of teachers and other personnel in the system as well as facilities, among others, the UBEC boss noted that the last time the personnel audit was conducted was in 2018.
According to him, the planned exercise would be carried in collaboration with the State Governments and the Federal Capital Territory in all schools offering full or elements of basic education.
Speaking further, Bobboyi the excercise would create a situation whereby proper planning is in place and put an end to waste of resources through overestimation.
He warned that Nigeria’s school data for any particular period should be a national data that is available for use in and outside the country, adding that from the schools to the federal level, and at all times, the number of characters of learners, teachers and other personnel in schools must be in sync.
“Our desire after the excercise was to put in place a structure that would be updating the 2018 database in continuous basis and through this, build a culture of data generation and management down to the school level. This could not be achieved due to the absence of facilities and personnel at the difference levels.”
He said the successful conduct of the excercise will give Nigeria a credible basic school data that can be quoted and used with confidence all over the world.
“One can hardly over emphasise the importance of up-to-date data, accurate and reliable data in the implementation of educational programmes Data enables us to plan effectively towards a systematic achievment of the educational objectives, track progress made, identify the strengths and weaknesses of implementation strategies and forms the basis of making informed decisions.
“The absence of current and reliable data often leads to faulty plans whose objectives are difficult to achieve.
“The 2018 excercise has been the most comprehensive because, unlike the previous two excercises which were limited to public schools only, it covered all categories of public and private basic education institutions.
“The outcome of the excercise was generally acknowledged to have met global standard and become acceptable as a useable tool for planning and tracking basic education in Nigeria
“We can ensure a successful conduct if the excercise so that Nigeria can have credible basic school data that can be quoted and used with confidence all over the world.”
