UNICEF, USAID train 32 education managers in Bauchi State

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have trained 32 education managers on capacity building in Bauchi State.

The exercise is being implemented under the USAID Learn to Read Project.

Mr Abdullahi Abubakar, Budget Planning and Policy Reform Specialist, USAID Learn to Read Project, stated this at the end of a three-day training exercise on Saturday in Bauchi.

He said the exercise was designed to expose education managers and planners to the use of Education Sector Performance Assessment tools.

According to him, the state’s Ministry of Education requested for technical assistance of USAID in training the participants, adding that UNICEF funded the exercise.

“Being a technical assistance project, we have to respond favourably to our partners, especially by adding value to the education sector in the country.

“We are doing skill transfer to education MDAs managers on how to use the expert tools to generate Annual Education Sector Performance report. It’s a sort of skill transfer through our technical assistance,” he said.

He said the participants drawn from the state Ministry of Education, State Universal Basic Education Board, Bauchi State Agency for Mass Education, State Agency for Normadic Education, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning attended the exercise.

The participants, he said, were expected to acquire skills on how to use the Annual Education Sector Performance tools to enable them to report annual education sector performances.

“This is because before now, education MDAs didn’t report their education performance according to the global best practices”.

He explained that the participants had interfaced with a lot of education indicators, particularly access indicator which has to do with number of school children, enrollment, number of schools, classrooms, pupil-teacher ratio, quality results, dropout issues and qualified teachers, among others.

Also speaking, Mrs Saadatu Usman, Coordinator, Development Partners, Bauchi State Ministry of Education, said the selected participants were the data banks of the ministry, hence the training.

“We are training data bank engine of education, to be able to develop annual report on education performances.

“We are training them on how to use the necessary tools to develop the report on education annually,” she said.

One of the participants, Awwal Bala said they had learnt so many things in the training exercise.

Bala, who is the Head, Education Management Information System, Bauchi State Agency for Mass Education, said they were being exposed to the importance of data keeping.

While commending the organisers, Bala called for expansion of the programme to enhance participationin in the exercise.