The lowest Out Of School (OSC) rates in Nigeria are now found in Imo State and Ekiti State with 1% and 2% respectively.
This was disclosed by UNICEF Chief Of Data (M4R) , Claes Johanson at a two day Media Dialogue jointly organised by the United Nations Children’s Fund , UNICEF and the Child Rights Information Bureau CRIB in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Johanson who gave an one out of four overview of MICS 6 report in the media dialogue held with media practitioners said the OSC data and other SDGs indicators were contained in the recently launched Multiple Indicators Cluster Survery 6,(MICS) result.
He further disclosed that the highest rates of Out Of School in Nigeria now resides in Kebbi State with 65% rate ,Zamfara 61% and Bauchi State 61% rate.
According to the UNICEF Data Expert, among children and adolescents aged 7-14years only 27% have foundational reading skills and only 25% have foundational numeracy skills.
Johanson identified increasing population growth as a factor threatening positive impact on the out of school trend,he added that 3 out 4 Nigerian children between the ages of 7 and 14years are out of school while only one out of 4 actually learn in schools.
“The MICS 6 report revealed poor foundational reading and numeracy skills” .
Recall that data on the 2018 Digest of Basic Education Statistics by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) showed that Kano, Akwa Ibom, Katsina, Kaduna, Taraba, Sokoto, Yobe, Zamfara and Bauchi top the highest number of OSC.
MICS6 Report On Child Marriage
Speaking on Child Marriage, Claes said MICS 6 recorded decrease on child marriage in Sokoto state.
“We also see that there is room for improvement everywhere particularly in education .
“For the first time we are looking at children that are actually learning and and we see that only 25 per cent at grade level in terms of reading and mathematics and one out of four children does not even go to school so the number of out-of-school children is still one in four and thats the same as five years ago so continuing education is the most important thing”
Claes disclosed that Child marriage in Sokoto state has reduced, according to him, child marriage used to be one in four but now it’s one in three girls that marry before the age of 18 .
“Overall we see that the child marriage drop a lot, so sokoto has improved on that more than the other states,so we are here to find out so that other states can learn what others are doing well in terms of reducing the age of child marriage” MICs 6.
Claes emphasised that MICS 6 revealed that Girl child education plays a huge role in early marriage and Sokoto and Zamfara has not improved much in out-of-school children.
“Girls education has a huge impact on everything from health to the education of the child of the next generation this is now where the education system must step in”.
UNICEF Communication Specialist, Geoffrey Njoku, said MICS 6 is an improvement on previous 5years yet it presented indices on poor performance on health , education and other areas of SDGs across the 36 States of Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory.
According to him, the media dialogue with media practitioners was organised to look into factors responsible for poor indices specifically as to why some lingering challenges still remain in some parts of the country.
“We have some good figures and we also have some that are not so good so we want to know why some of these indices are not very good we have to look at it from ,could it wrong identification of application of funds ,could it be non-application ,could it also be wrong identification of where to apply the funds” .
Njoku stressed that political will is needed with marked resources to intervene with positive impact that will yield better results on the issues of the Sustainable development goals.
He called for more actions,better interventions to make significant difference in reducing the number of out of school children in states with prevalence.
“Good we said that Out of school is decreased but in absolute numbers we have a population growth that swallows up and minimises the results”
Njoku added that the dialogue was held to get good and better results five years from now on health, education and SDGs through our reports in various media platform”
About 50 media practitioners attended the media dialogue with UNICEF in Port Harcourt.
In the Photo : UNICEF Data Expert, Claes Johanson With Some Media Practitioners Present At The Media Dialogue .
 rates in Nigeria are now found in Imo State and Ekiti State with 1% and 2% respectively.){kind=link}