Out-of-school children: Bauchi govt. trains 370 enumerators on school census

The Bauchi state Ministry of Education has embarked on a two-day training of 370 enumerators for the annual school census in the state.

Addressing the enumerators shortly before the commencement of the training in Bauchi on Saturday, the state Commissioner for Education, Hajiya Jamila Dahiru congratulated the enumerators for being selected to participate in the exercise.

According to her, the exercise was very crucial as it would help the state government to know the actual numbers of schools, students and pupils of both the integrated Quranic and public schools as well as the facilities, so as to equip itself with the necessary data for proper planning.

Dahiru, who reminded all the participants in the exercise on the need to effectively and accurately carry out the exercise, said no school must be left behind.

She explained that the census exercise would last for 10 days, starting from March 6, 2023.

“Without the correct data, we won’t have something to work on. We are hoping that using our annual school census for this year, we will be able to come up with projects and planning for anything that we want to do in the next few years.

“So, if you mislead us, we will be misled entirely, and it is important that you capture and present accurate data.

“The reason why we said we want to have a robust annual school census this year is because over the years, we have been having records of Bauchi state statistics of out-of-school children where we were told that we are now leading in Nigeria.

“We believe that this is not true. If we have people, ministries, other agencies, and recruiting teachers over the years and enrolling students, yet we keep on topping the chart, I think something is wrong.

“Either the data is not correct or we are doing something wrong. And so, we want to find out,” said the Commissioner.

She urged the participants to go out as ambassadors of the state, keeping in mind that acquisition of true data was their topmost priority which would help the ministry and any other stakeholders that might be interested in improving the educational sector in the state.

One of the enumerators who spoke on behalf of all, Ibrahim Dauda, promised to do the needful in getting and presenting credible data that would help to improve the ministry and the educational system in the state.