Kwara education reform achieves milestones: 180,000 new enrollments, 50% drop in illiteracy

KwaraLEARN’s Managing Director, Laide Abel, announced that the programme has successfully enrolled 180,000 pupils in its learning initiative over the past two years
He made mention that the project facilitated by the government of Kwara State under the leadership of Gov. Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, involved Government’s huge investment in modern technology to empower teachers and support learning in basic class.
During a stakeholders’ retreat celebrating KwaraLEARN’s second anniversary, Abel revealed that the program has achieved a significant 50% improvement in literacy and numeracy skills among pupils in Kwara’s basic schools.
A statement by Mashood  Abdulrafiu Agboola, Deputy CPS to the governor, quoted the director, saying, “so far, we have seen a lot of impacts, and I will say in two years, we are happy with the results we are getting. For instance, the number of our school children who could not read has been reduced by over 50%, while the number of our children who could not solve simple numeracy sums has been reduced by over 50%. We will continue to do more to achieve more positive results.
“Another area that I must talk about is the improvement in the enrollment of children in schools. The school enrollment has increased to over 180,000 children from primary 1 to 6 across all public primary schools in the state from 120,000 when the programme commenced.
“That shows the impacts and acceptability of the programme. Similarly, absenteeism has also dropped by 50 per cent because everyone understands that they are being monitored directly from different situation rooms”, he explained.
Muhammed Baba Salahu, Chairman of the House Committee on Education, commended the Government for its significant investment in transforming the state’s education sector, nothing that the remarkable results signify a profound shift from previous standards.
“KwaraLEARN project is very promising, although in the Education sector you cannot do it all at a time. Rome was not built in a day. So, we still have some gaps, but it is a clear shift from the ugly past.
“We sincerely thank His Excellency Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq for the right investments in education and many other sectors,” he said.
Also speaking was, Sa’adatu Moddibo Kawu, Commissioner for Education and Human Capital Development added that the initiative program has been of great help and impactful, while the development recorded so far has been very encouraging.
“It has really improved the learning outcome tremendously across board. We saw more of these excellent results in the recent examinations at that level. We have also been able to check absenteeism in the classroom. So, the programme has been very impactful,” she said.