A non-governmental organisation called Partnership For Learning For All In Nigeria (PLANE) in collaboration with the Kaduna State Ministry of Education and State Basic Education Board (SUBEB) on Monday flagged-off distribution of 280,000 learning materials to 725 public primary schools in six local government areas in the State.
The materials are basically books and maps developed in such a way that the children in pre-primary and primary classes one and two can be learning while singing in tandem with numeric and alphabets as contained in the books in the Hausa language – with a guide by their teachers who have been trained for this purpose.
The materials are expected to be distributed to 82 schools in Soba, 61 in Sabon Gari (representing zone I – Kaduna North), 54 in Kaduna North, 36 in Kaduna South (representing zone II – Kaduna Central), 182 in Jaba, and 192 in Sanga (representing zone III – Kaduna South) totaling 725 schools in these six selected local government areas.
Technical Adviser, Teaching and Learning, PLANE, Kaduna, Mr. Salim Sadiq said, these particular books target pre-primary and primary one and two pupils only with an intention to scale it up to primary six within the eight-year lifespan of the project.
According to him, “we are distributing 280,000 learning materials to 725 public primary schools in six local government areas of the state just to support the state government in providing Kaduna children with a solid foundation.
“We believe that having the right content is key to educational development in Nigeria. We want to ensure children that are in public schools are really learning so we can have brilliant generations”, he added.
Permanent Secretary, Kaduna State Ministry of Education, Dr. Halliru Musa Soba who officially flagged off the exercise at SUBEB premises expressed gratitude to PLANE for keying into the federal government’s resolve to promote learning through the mother tongue in Nigerian pre-primary and primary schools.
“We appreciate PLANE for selecting Karuna State for this intervention. This will help to reduce learning poverty because once the foundation is solid, learning will not be a difficult thing for our children.
“This is also a plus to the need for us to teach our children at the basic level in their mother tongue so they better understand what they are being taught.
“As a teacher, you are entrusted with these materials. You must therefore ensure the materials reach the children they are meant for. We don’t want to hear any case of diversion and that is why we will start monitoring the distribution from today. Anyone found wanting would be penalised accordingly”, he said.
In his goodwill message, State Team Lead, Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL), Mr. Abel Adejor tasked the donour organisation and the state government to ensure the materials get to the intended beneficiaries as soon as possible.
“We are happy these materials are going to be distributed in schools under us. We need to know that it is a collective responsibility to ensure that our children use these materials and leave them for others to also use. We want to see us monitoring how the distribution is done to ensure it gets to the intended beneficiaries”, he said.
