Wahab Alawiye-King |
According to
Alawiye-King, the agency has taken many out-of-school children off the streets
and onboarding them into classrooms through EkoExcel, saying it had also
protected out-of-school children from daily violence, abuse, neglect,
exploitation and exclusion they faced.
The executive chairman
made this known while speaking on the achievements of the programme introduced
some years back, saying that it cannot be overemphasised that over nine million
out-of-school children needed protection from the daily violence, abuse,
neglect, among others.
“It cannot be
overemphasised that over nine million out-of-school children need protection
from the daily violence, abuse, neglect, exploitation and exclusion they face.
Lagos State has over 2 million out-of-school children, this is a problem that
the government wanted to tackle with the introduction of the programme,” he
said.
Alawiye-King, however,
said a vivid example was Segun’s story that changed for the best during a pupil
registration drive of the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board’s
(LASUBEB) EKOEXCEL, a transformational intervention launched in 2019 by Governor
Babajide Sanwo-Olu to provide quality education to both the rich and the poor
and upskill teachers leveraging technology.
“The enrollment drive
exercise has yielded tremendous results since its commencement, with a good
number of out-of-school children being captured and registered into EKOEXCEL
schools as a result of the exercise
“One, in particular,
is the story of a boy called Segun Borno. Segun Borno wouldn’t have believed if
he had been told before September 2021 that he would be enrolled in a primary
school by that month-end and improved his literacy and numeracy skills three
months later.
“The reason was that
until the morning of that September, while Seguns’ age mates were in school,
Segun was on the streets, helping to support his grandparents and siblings from
the proceeds of candy he hawked. His grandparents were not pleased that he was
engaged in petty trading, ultimately, their desire was for him to be educated
but they couldn’t afford it.
The executive chairman, who sadly noted
that Lagos State had over two million out-of-school children, a problem that
the state was determined to tackle with the introduction of the EKOEXCEL
programme, recalled that Governor Sanwo-Olu at the inception of his
administration assured Lagosians that the provision of qualitative education
was a major priority and was determined to change the face of primary education
by re-training and empowering teachers with technology driving techniques to
tutor students as well as the enrollment of out-of-school children into school
with a robust pupil enrollment drive exercise.
“Besides, the first of the campaign’s four
objectives are driving enrollment and reducing the number of out of school
children in alignment with the government’s ‘Leave No Child Behind Policy.’
“The others are boosting academic
excellence from a foundational level in Lagos public schools, engaging parents
and communities on the need and importance of education and connecting citizens
to the government’s economic growth agenda through the transformation of
education.
“With empirical proof from the recently
released EKOEXCEL 2020-2021 Endline Fluency and Numeracy Evaluation that
affirmed that the intervention is making a significant impact with pupils,
teachers and the states’ educational system, it is also noteworthy that it is
succeeding in reducing out of school children.
The evaluation showed that EKOEXCEL pupils
are making strong progress in oral reading fluency and foundational numeracy
compared to their performance before the initiative’s commencement,” he stated.
He expressed the belief that more pupils
would be enrolled and no effort would be spared in giving them quality
education to become globally competitive.
Also speaking, Permanent Board Member of
LASUBEB and oversight chair of the EKOEXCEL Programme, Honourable Adebayo
Adefuye, added that the decision to turn public schools into friendly places
for learning had also boosted enrolment.
“We are making public schools a fun,
friendly environment for learning and I’m certain we will see more improvements
in our enrolment figures,” he said.
Adefuye disclosed that EKOEXCEL schools
were monitored in real-time by a digital and data-driven electronic dashboard
that displays the data of all 1009 primary schools under the programme, 13,673
teachers, 10,085 classrooms and the almost 500,000 pupils across all the local
government areas in Lagos State.