The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has kicked off the implementation of HOPE-EDU program, a new intervention designed to enable equal opportunity for Children, under school age, to access basic education in Nigeria.

The World Bank and Global Partnership for Education funded program is being anchored by UBEC in collaboration with State Universal Basic Education Boards to reduce Out-of-School Children in the country by 29 million.

Speaking at the opening of two days sensitization program on the Implementation of HOPE-EDU program Monday in Kano, UBEC Executive Secretary, Dr. Aisha Garba said the intervention worth $552.18 million funding from the foreign partners intended to compliment government basic education in the areas of technical support, school enrollment and increasing infrastructure for more impactful results.

Dr. Garba explained that the program which aligned seamlessly with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda is tailored to empowering 500,000 teachers, constructing 13,000 classrooms, bringing millions of out of school children back to school nationwide.

Unlike the counterpart funding model between UBEC and SUBEB, Dr. Garba asserted that states boards who are the key drivers of the program will be offered grants and technical assistance under HOPE-EDU after fulfilling some requirements.

She said the two days program which drawn heads of SUBEB in North West and North Eastern states was designed to educate participants on the operational guidelines on the Implementation of the program.

According to her, “The basic education sector is a top priority for this government. It’s in line with the president’s agenda. So, the most important thing that this programme is targeting, is to increase access, particularly for out-of-school children in Nigeria, as well as improve the quality of education by empowering teachers, building the capacity of teachers.

“So really, this is why this programme is very important for us, because it’s bringing additional financing to the basic education sector. Yet the mode for this programme is called Programme for Results. What Programme for Results means, is that the states will actually implement the programmes, through the SUBEB.

“The World Bank will now give them what they call incentive reward, once they achieve a result for example, one of the targets is to reduce the number of out-of-school children. We can now say, Kano State, reduce one million out-of-school children and bring them back to school. So, for each child, the project will now count to see how many children, and then based on that, they give them the financing”.

Kano state Commissioner for Education, Dr. Ali Haruna Makoda expressed the readiness of the state to take advantage of the World Bank funded program to improve quality of teaching and learning in public basic schools.

Makoda emphasized that government’s priority on education resonated in the budgetary allocation, recruitment of additional teachers and declaration of state of emergency on education. He commended the Federal Government for the initiative.