By Joseph Erunke, Abuja
The Federal Government has raised the alarm over a growing form of “invisible dropout” in Nigerian schools, warning that many girls may be abandoning education emotionally and academically long before they are officially recorded as having left school.
The Minister of State for Education, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmad, said on Monday that simply seeing a child inside a classroom could no longer be regarded as proof that she was receiving an education.
According to her, bullying, abuse, ridicule, exclusion and unsafe school environments could gradually drive girls out of learning even while they continued to report to school every day.
Ahmad, who spoke in Abuja at the National Trainers’ Workshop on Safe Learning Environment, Gender-Responsive Technology and ICT Skills for Educators in Teacher Training Institutions in Nigeria, was represented by the Director, College of Education in the Federal Ministry of Education, Dr Uchenna Uba.
She said the education system must begin to look beyond enrolment figures and physical attendance to determine whether children were actually participating, learning and feeling safe in school.
“A girl does not always leave school on a day her name disappears from the register. Sometimes she leaves a little early while she is still sitting in the classroom.
“She raises her hand and is never called upon. Other children laugh when she speaks, and no one stops them. Someone makes her feel unsafe, and she cannot think of an adult she trusts enough to tell.
“She is present every morning, but slowly, quietly, she withdraws. If we count only enrolment, we may miss that girl entirely,” she said.
The minister said the warning was particularly important against the backdrop of Nigeria’s learning crisis, citing UNICEF data which indicated that 74 per cent of children aged seven to 14 lacked basic reading and mathematics skills in 2024.
Ahmad said behind the statistics were millions of children whose difficulties could not be addressed merely by keeping them enrolled in school.
She declared that the Federal Government was, therefore, seeking a shift from an education system focused largely on getting children into classrooms to one that also guarantees their safety, inclusion, participation and learning outcomes.
The minister said the Federal Ministry of Education had introduced the National Policy on Anti-Bullying in Nigerian Schools and its implementation guidelines, but warned that the effectiveness of the policy would ultimately be determined by what happened inside individual classrooms.
She charged teachers and other school personnel to develop the capacity to identify bullying, respond appropriately to abuse and create an atmosphere where pupils could confidently seek help.
“Success, however, will be decided in schools and classrooms by whether a teacher recognises bullying, whether a child knows how to seek help, and whether the adults responsible respond with care and consistency,” Ahmad said.
She, however, acknowledged that teachers were themselves operating under difficult conditions, including overcrowded classrooms, inadequate teaching materials and heavy workloads.
Consequently, she said, policies would achieve little unless teachers were adequately prepared and supported to implement them.
“We cannot simply hand her a policy and expect every difficulty to disappear. We must prepare her to put it into practice. That is the promise of this workshop,” she said.
The workshop is expected to train 45 master trainers drawn from 15 teacher training colleges across the country in gender-responsive pedagogy, safe learning environments, prevention and response to school-related gender-based violence, and digital teaching.
The master trainers are, in turn, expected to cascade the knowledge to about 500 teacher educators in their respective institutions.
Ahmad commended the government of Japan, through UNESCO, for providing ICT equipment to the 15 beneficiary colleges, describing the intervention as an investment in the institutions responsible for producing Nigeria’s future teachers.
She, however, challenged the beneficiaries to ensure that the equipment did not become idle facilities but was converted into practical improvements in teaching and teacher preparation.
The minister urged the master trainers to replicate the training in their institutions, give colleagues opportunities to practise the new approaches and monitor their impact on student teachers and, ultimately, pupils.
In his goodwill message, the Provost, Federal College of Education (Technical), Asaba, Dr James Olisa, who spoke on behalf of the Committee of Provosts, described the intervention as timely.
Olisa said teacher-training institutions needed to be equipped with the skills, technology and resources required to prepare educators for the realities of modern classrooms.
He stressed that the success of the initiative would depend largely on how effectively the beneficiary institutions deployed the skills and equipment provided.
Similarly, the Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Japan in Nigeria, Kozaki Hitoshi, reaffirmed Japan’s commitment to supporting Nigeria’s education development.
Kozaki said the partnership was built around collaboration and local ownership, stressing that the real value of the intervention would be determined by how beneficiary institutions used the equipment and skills to strengthen teacher preparation and expand learning opportunities.
He added that Japan’s support was designed to complement the efforts of African governments and institutions rather than impose externally driven solutions.
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