Experts call for emergency fund to address impact of COVID-19 on education
Mr Oriyomi Ogunwale, the Team Lead at Eduplana on Friday called on the Federal Government to release emergency fund to address the impact of COVID-19 on the education sector.
It was reported that Eduplana is an online advocacy platform that addresses education mismanagement gaps in the educational sector.
Ogunwale made the appeal during a virtual conference organised by Eduplana as part of activities marking the International Day of Education held usually on Jan. 24.
The theme of the event was “Recover and Revitalise Education for the COVID-19 Generation.”
He said that the Federal Government must begin to implement better education management practices, especially during periods of high emergency in education.
“As an organisation working to increase access to quality education for every child, we urge the government to release an emergency fund in order to address the impact of COVID-19 on Education.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted learning negatively and has affected school resumption as parents fear for their child or ward returning back to the classroom.
“The inadequate provision to ensure schools, especially the public ones, to comply with the COVID-19 guidelines, practice social distancing, available hand washing facilities and provision of nose masks has resulted in low attendance rate,” he said.
Ogunwale noted that already, Nigeria had more than 10 million out of school children,
He said that hence the need for the Federal Government to address the infrastructure, personnel gaps quickly by providing an emergency fund for the education sector.
Also, Precious Ebere, Co-Founder at DoTakeAction, urged the government to run public universities as a trust where each university could operate independently.
She said that once they operated independently, the government should then serve as a stand-alone donor agency to the different tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
Mr Gideon Olanrewaju, the Chief Executive Director at Aid for Rural Education Access Initiative (AREAi) said: “Nigeria as a society must begin to build the resilience of its educational sector in case there is another humanitarian crisis like COVID-19.”
Olanrewaju said that there was an urgent need to improve teachers’ welfare, training capacity and motivation.
