The Minister of Education, Dr. Igwe Aja-Nwachuku has on yesterday revealed that over 80million children are currently out of school from which Nigeria account for about 11million of them.

The minister who made this known at the launch of the 2008 Global Education For All (EFA) week celebration in Abuja, however, expressed commitment of the administration to enforce the universal right and all-inclusive education through Universal Basic Education in the country in achieving the EFA by the year 2015.

Aja-Nwachuku lamented that the access and retention levels particularly for certain categories of people such as girls, children with special needs and those in difficulty circumstances were still low and therefore stressed that urgent attention must be paid to that if the goals of EFA by 2015 were to be achieved.

He pointed out that the government has already noted some of the major challenges in the Nigerian education sector, which included according to him, “poverty with its extreme manifestation, dilapidated infrastructure resulting in insufficient child-friendly classrooms, insufficient instructional materials, inadequate teacher supply, quality of education delivery, cultural barriers and gender discrimination”.

The minister added that his ministry in collaboration with other agencies has taken bold steps in addressing some of these challenges aimed at improving quality education to end exclusion. As part of these initiatives, he said the curriculum for nine-year basic and compulsory education has been developed and the Junior Secondary School Curricula would be implemented by the 2008/2009 academic year, while that of the Senior Secondary School would be become effective from 2011.

Besides, the Minister stated that the government has recruited about 40,000 NCE Teachers under the implementation of the Federal Teachers’ Scheme and distributed to various states, while effort is being made to strengthen the Inspectorate Service of the ministry so as to ensure quality assurance.

He said the theme of this year’s celebration entitled, “Quality Education to End Exclusion” was timely, imploring that, and “to achieve the target all hands must be on deck to contribute to the execution of the programme as government alone could not do it.