Published By: Kazeem Ugbodaga
19th January, 2022
The Executive Chairman, Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board, LASUBEB, Wahab Alawiye-King has said EkoExcel programme has rescued a lot of children from engaging in various social vices since inception.
He made the declaration while speaking on the achievements of the programme introduced some years back.
He recalled that since commencement of the Programme, it has taken many out-of-school children off streets and onboarding them into classrooms, as well as protecting out-of-school children from daily violence, abuse, neglect, exploitation and exclusion they face.
“It cannot be overemphasized that over nine millions out-of-school children need protection from the daily violence, abuse, neglect, exploitation and exclusion they face. Lagos State has over 2 millions out-of-school children, this is a problem that the government wanted to tackle with the introduction of the programme”, he said.
However, the Chairman said a vivid example was Segun’s story that changed for the best during 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 Segun’s 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. So, the young boy became a negative statistic, by being amongst the 258 million children and youths who are out of school globally according to UNESCO’s 2018 statistics” Alawiye-King said.
He also said Lagos State has over two million out-of-school children, a problem that the state is determined to tackle with the introduction of the EKOEXCEL programme.
According to the Executive Chairman, 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.
Also speaking, Permanent Board Member of LASUBEB and oversight chair of the EKOEXCEL programme, Adebayo Adefuye, added that the decision to turn public schools into friendly places for learning has 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
“Furthermore, EKOEXCEL schools are monitored 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.
“This dashboard is accessible on-the-go to all the relevant primary education stakeholders across Lagos State.Having made education and technology a vital pillar of his development agenda,” he said.
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