Oyo State Records Excess of 70,000 Enrolment in Public Primary Schools

Oyo State has recorded more than 70,000 increase in public primary schools enrolment in the last two years.

Executive Chairman, Oyo State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Dr Nureni Adeniran, explained in Ibadan on Tuesday that there had also been massive infrastructural development and quality assurance in the sector.

“When we came on board there used to be a decline in enrolment of pupils in public primary schools, but government’s free education policy programme has changed the trajectory.

“When we came on board two years ago, there were about 383,000 pupils in public primary schools, but as at the last count we had about 456,000 pupils in public primary schools.

“This means that those children that would have been out of school are now attracted back into the classroom.

“They are attracted back to school for various reasons such as end to discrimination along the line of economic status of parents and the transformational development going on in the schools,’’ Adeniran said.

Adeniran attributed the improvements to increased budgetary allocation to the sector as well as timely payment of counterpart funds to the Universal Basic Education Commission.

“We also need to say that not less than 23 per cent of Oyo State’s annual budget is now dedicated to the education sector.

“It is unprecedented because in the past, there used to be 3per cent or 5 per cent budgetary allocation to education.

“This is a clear departure from what used to be and this is in line with UNESCO’s recommendation on budget for education,’’ he said.

Adeniran also said that the assessments of Sustainable Development Goals office and other agencies showed that quality in teaching and learning in Oyo State’s education sector had improved tremendously.

He said that the state is now rated 11th as against 22nd position it used to be in WAEC outcomes.

He said the state had completed the building of 48 model schools in the last two years and also constructed 45 blocks of the three classrooms, 22 blocks of four classrooms and a block of six classrooms.

“We also have 26 blocks of four compartment toilets completed. We have succeeded in renovating 120 blocks of classrooms across schools, and we have sunk 77 boreholes.

“We have procured and distributed about 9,000 pairs of students’ desks and benches while 477 sets of teachers’ furniture have also been procured and distributed.

“Apart from these, about 150 projects are still on-going and we have about 7,000 furniture items that are work-in-progress which will be completed soon and will be distributed to schools,’’ he said.

Adeniran said the present government started off by paying 2018 counterpart funds in the education sector and had also paid for subsequent years.

He said that Oyo government also introduced reading and writing as a period on the time table of secondary schools students to ensure that they improved in the skills.

He explained that the school period for reading and writing is different from the period for English or Yoruba language teachings.

“We also have agricultural educational training programmes wherein we have agriculture in some of our public primary schools and some of them engage in animal husbandry, poultry and crop farming determined by the nature of their location.

“This is also to promote the interest of the students in the areas of agriculture.

“We also organise series of trainings for head teachers, class teachers, science and mathematics teachers as well as early childhood education teachers,’’ Adeniran said.