No child must be left behind in education

In commemoration of the International Day of Education, stakeholders in the sector have stressed the need for all children to be carried along in learning.

The Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor on Education, Mr Tokunbo Wahab, and the Chief Executive Officer, Edumark Consult, Mrs Yinka Ogunde, in a separate interview with our correspondent said education was the bedrock for development and as such, no child must be left behind.

Wahab said, “For Nigerians and Lagosians, the message that, we must continue to preach is that education is the bedrock for development as a human resource and capital. Not any of those natural resources. We must also as state and non-state actors continue to provide the required access and improved quality to the mass of our citizens.

Similarly, Ogunde called for an assessment of the education sector which had gone through a tough season since the pandemic began.

She said, “It is a sector that has gone through so many challenges within the last twelve months. For a lot of stakeholders, it has been a period of going back to the drawing board to redesign businesses, especially the private school sector.

“For children in low-cost schools who do not have access to all the gadgets and things that make it easy for online classes to be delivered, some of them, have been left behind and the pandemic has made the sector a very tough one. All I can say at this time is that whatever may be the challenges, as long as we are ready to keep on pressing forward, to keep learning, redesigning solution, we will certainly find a way out.

“Because we all need to break it down to various compartments, that means the private school, the high and private schools and low private schools, the public schools, the ones in the rural areas. It has to be education for all it has to be that no child must be left behind.

“The key thing we must look at is the issue of manpower.  A lot has happened to education professionals in the past year and I hope we will actually be able to assess the situation so that we will know the extent of what has gone wrong or had turned out to be for the better.

“I think a lot of research should be done in that area. I know that in the private sector there has been quite a major shift because private school owners could not afford to keep up with payment of salary, so many things which discouraged professionals in the sector and I hope we will be able to sort it out and get things going again.”

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed January 24 as International Day of Education.