12th March, 2012
Delta government says 17,196 people have enrolled in its adult and formal education programme.
Mr. Alex Ukubenyinje, the Permanent Secretary, Agency for Adult and Non-formal education in the state, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Asaba.
Ukubenyinje said that the figure which was recorded as at February this year, increased by about 35 percent as against the 13,198 students recorded as at February, 2010.
According to him, the students are being taught in 518 centres across the state.
He said that Uvwie Council Area had seven centres, the least in the state, while Isoko South had 29, the highest.
Ukubenyinje said that the basic literacy unit of the programme had an enrolment of 9, 843 students, with 1,468 instructors teaching them while “Literacy by Radio”, another unit, had 5, 649 students, with 52 facilitators.
He explained that the radio instructional programme was usually aired on Delta Broadcasting Service (DBS) stations in Asaba and Warri twice in a week while the facilitators met the students once a week.
“Another unit of our programme is ‘Vocational Literacy’, which combines basic literacy and skilled acquisition and we have 30 separate centres for it in the state,” Ukubeyinje said.
He added that enrolment in the unit was not less than 30 students in each local government area, adding that nine council areas were already offering Post Basic Literacy programme.
“We have 1,515 learners who enrolled for Junior Secondary School (JSS), NECO and WAEC examinations in the post basic literacy programme.
“And, we have graduated 366 JSS students, 111 NECO students and 90 WAEC students,” he disclosed.
The Permanent Secretary said that the stipend paid to instructors handling the programme in the state was N4, 000 but expressed regret that it was less than the N7, 500 fixed for them by the Federal Government.
He called for some level of autonomy for the agency in order to enhance its budgetary allocation from the state government “and to hasten release of its funds.”