NEWS:Federal Government Set To Begin Audits On Schools Nationwide

The Federal Government, through the Universal Basic Education Commission has announced that it will commence the audit of pupils and teaching personnel in public and private-owned schools nationwide. The purpose of the planned audit is to collect data for the purpose of policy planning and implementation.

Dr. Hamid Bobboyi, The UBEC Executive Secretary, who stated this at a briefing in Abuja, yesterday said the audit of the teaching personnel in schools would begin by April 29 in the southern states and June 3 in the northern states. Bobboyi noted that the exercise was aimed at collating reliable data for the national databank in line with the Nigeria’s Education Management Information System policy. The commission said it would deploy no fewer than 725 officials to work with the State Universal Basic education Boards and the Local Government Education Authorities for the exercise.

His statement reads;

“If we don’t embark on this exercise, we will keep having policies in education that are not related to the problems on the ground. It will help us to be able to address the enormous challenges in the basic education sector in the long term. We cannot build structures and the human resources that are needed in the education sector without the proper foundation.

“We carried out the audit of all public basic education schools in 2006 and also in 2010. Consequent upon the foregoing, the commission is about to conduct a more comprehensive audit of all public and private education institutions in the country in order to obtain reliable data.

“We want to get comprehensive and reliable data of children of school-age enrolled in basic education schools. Also, there is the need to obtain the number and qualifications of teaching and non-teaching personnel in these schools. Thirdly, we want to address the challenge of inadequacy of education data for the purpose of effective planning and management.”