By Adeyinka Adeniran
United Nations Children’s Funds (UNICEF) has appealed to government at all levels to, as a matter of necessity make some amount of money, available for public primary and secondary schools across the country.
This initiative according to the Fund will help save some minor and petty challenges in the schools before it escalate due to government bureaucratic processes that may delay before government makes provision.
The advice forms part of findings and recommendations from the Minimum Standards for Safe Schools’ scorecards,a policy document to enhance safety around schools in the country.
Speaking during a presentation at the State level workshop for Education stakeholders on Safe School Implementation which held at Government College, Ibadan on Tuesday, an Education Specialists (Safe School), UNICEF, Mr Believe Eke lamented that many states are not doing well enough in implementing the Safe School Policy.
He said UNICEF embarked on the stakeholders workshop to enlighten, sensitise all stakeholders in the education sector on their roles in order to translate from the level of mere policy formulation to action and implementation of the Safe School Policy of the Federal government.
He said “What we are doing as UNICEF is to support the safe schools in Nigeria and like I said during the presentation, what we are doing is just moving from policy to action. We supported the Government to develop a lot of policies, the minimum standard for safe school, we have the national policy for safety security and violence free school.
“What we are saying is that those at the school level, the community level need to understand their roles, the government need to know what they need to do to be able to make school safer in Nigeria.
“So the monitoring report that was done last year, the survey was in 10 states in the country, we wanted to know how safe are schools and based on the minimum standard looking at conflict, violence, natural hazards, everyday hazards
“Are the schools really safe? That’s the question we ask in the schools and so 6000 schools were surveyed and out of the 6000 schools, we were able to find out that out of 21 standards of the minimum standard, schools are implementing are not up to even 10.
“The percentage of implementation is still far far lower and so that is one of the reasons why we brought this workshop to see how we can create more awareness in the minimum standard for safe school. What government need to do, what stakeholders need to do to make schools safe in Nigeria and that is our goal. That’s why we’re here”
He said the next phase, about ten states, including Oyo will be surveyed to ascertain the level of implementation of the Safe school Policy and confirm school safety.
“In this next survey, we are doing another survey this year and Oyo state is part of it and we are looking at 18 states this time around to find out the level of safety of children in the schools because our goal is to make schools in Nigeria to be safe and to provide a safer learning environment for students in Nigeria
“What we are advocating for is school grant. We are saying that there should be small grant for schools. Because you discover that if you go to some schools even to buy chalk, government is providing, yes, but sometimes there is a gap between the time the government will provide those facilities and the time that the children need to learn.
“There are some schools you would go to that the door of the school is pulled off and the school authority need to take action on some minor repairs they can do for school safety and other issues.
“So we are saying the government should be able to provide some small grant just like an impress fund for school to be able to manage few things, carry out minor repairs and that is what we are advocating for”, Eke added.
Also speaking, another Education Specialist, Babagana Aminu said the workshop is to support the Federal Government and Oyo state with the implementation of the Safe School Policy with the basic mandate of ensuring that the basic rights for children is really achieved and fulfilled.
In his remarks, the state Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Professor Abdul-waheed Adelabu appealed to UNICEF to ensure that instrument to be used for data collection in the state should reflect the peculiarities and input of stakeholders from the state so as to ensure accuracy of data.
He assures that the state will partner with relevant bodies and agencies including UNICEF to ensure that the schools are safe for studies across the state.
