An assessment conducted by the United Nations Children’s Fund, have revealed that 75% of pupils in Nigerian primary schools struggle with literacy and numeracy skills.
According to The PUNCH, the Chief of Education in Nigeria for the global agency, Saadhna Panday-Soobrayan, stated this during the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy seminar held in Maiduguri, Borno State.
“Nigeria has a severe learning crisis with three out of four children being unable to read or to solve a simple math problem,” Panday-Soobrayan said at the opening of the seminar, which drew participants from stakeholders in the education sector from Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.
“This not only hobbles children’s opportunity to learn higher order skills but it’s also fuelling the out-of-school (children) problem through high levels of drop out. So if we want to solve the out-of-school (children) problem, we must solve the quality problem in learning,” she said.
Panday-Soobrayan recommended addressing the issue at the grassroots level.
“The time is now to begin scaling it across all LGAs,” she said.
