Kano State Commissioner of Education, Dr Ali Haruna Makoda, has announced that for the past years, there has been no valid data regarding out-of-school children in the state.
He noted, however, that “According to the UNESCO report, Nigeria has 10% of the total number of out-of-school children globally, which is about 10.2 million, but Kano accounts for 7.6%, with 989,000 out-of-school children.”
He assured that the government is currently working on modalities to generate authentic data and address the problem, hence the formation of a committee.
According to a statement signed by the Director of Public Enlightenment, Ministry of Education, Kano State, Alhaji Balarabe Abdullahi Kiru, Dr Makoda made this known during the committee’s biannual meeting on Sunday.
The meeting served as an avenue for the cross-fertilisation of ideas, where new issues were raised and positive resolutions reached for effective education policy delivery.
As part of ongoing efforts to address education challenges, the Kano State Education Sector Joint Steering Committee conducted a two-day biannual meeting in Kaduna, assessing the status and progress of the education sector in the state.
It could be recalled that earlier in 2024, the Kano State Government, under the leadership of Alhaji Abba Kabir Yusuf inaugurated the Education Sector Joint Steering Committee comprising members from government agencies, key stakeholders, and development partners to harmonise support for the state’s education sector.
On 22 February 2025, the committee met in Kaduna to align the state’s education priorities with strategic objectives to achieve better results.
Dr Makoda explained that during the meeting, the committee reviewed what had so far been achieved within the last six months in the education sector.
He maintained that the committee also agreed on new strategic steps to adopt in order to improve effective education service delivery.
He further revealed that during the meeting, the committee specifically discussed the problem of out-of-school children in the state, adding that the government had already formed the Kano State Out-of-School Children Education Initiative Committee, which is expected to be inaugurated tomorrow.
Earlier, the Technical Adviser to the Governor on Educational Reforms, Haladu Muhammad, disclosed that during the meeting, participants were expected to present key insights on the Kano mutual accountability framework, curriculum reform, and the SDG roadmap from 2025 to 2030.In their separate remarks, the Chairman, House Committee on SUBEB, Usman Abubakar Tasiu Kiru, and the Chairman, House Committee on Education, Suleiman Mukhtar Madobi, assured the Assembly’s full support for the development of the education sector in the state.
His Highness, the Emir of Kano, Malam Muhammad Sanusi Lamido Sanusi II, represented by the Dokajin Kano, District Head of Garko, Alhaji Muhd Aliyu, assured the total support of the Emirate in achieving quality education in the state, stressing the need to prioritise vocational education to make the youth self-reliant.
Presenting goodwill messages on behalf of their organisations, representatives of PLANE FCDO, UNICEF, Plan International, Bridge Connect Africa, Com Ed Connect Agile, IDEAS, Save the Children, K-SAFE, SBMC, and NUT also highlighted some of the educational interventions so far carried out in the state.
The development partners further presented progress reports covering their various intervention programmes in the education sector in Kano.