Nigeria's Federal Government has stated that Almajiri children - children undergoing Islamic education practised in northern Nigeria - are not meant to be regarded as out-of-school.
Suwaba Saidu, the minister of state for education, who said this during an Arise TV news show, noted that the Almajiri already have a system of education.
He said it only needs to embrace foundational literacy and numeracy components, skills acquisition, and digital lessons.
Saidu said the federal government plans to redefine “out-of-school children” to exclude the Almajiri after incorporating their associated Islamic schools into Nigeria’s formal basic education framework.
“One of the key issues we’re trying to solve is out-of-school children. We have reforms that are targeted at re-enrolling these children. Take for instance the Almajiri Commission. It has programmes. We have about 15 million out-of-school children,” Saidu said.
“There are different data sources and it all depends on the one you are looking at. The 15 million includes Almajiri, but we are all aware that the Almajiri have a system of education. They have their curriculum and teachers.
“We want to go back and redefine what we mean by out-of-school children because Almajiri is not part of that.
“To ensure that Almajri fits into the formal system, let’s go back and see how to provide them with foundational learning, basic numeracy, basic literacy, some aspects of digital training, and skills acquisition.”
One in every three Nigerian children is estimated to be out of school, including 10.2 million at the primary level and 8.1 million at the junior secondary level according to UNICEF data.
Recent data from UNESCO puts Nigeria’s out-of-school children rate at 28 million, 19.5 million in rural and 8.5 million in urban areas.
Leave a Reply