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SO3 – Basic Education Photo of children in classroom

Education services were particularly hard-hit by the years of military dictatorship. Today, just 60% of age-eligible children are enrolled in primary school, and nearly half of these eventually drop out before completing the primary school. Of those who remain in school to the sixth grade, only 40 percent are functionally literate. USAID assists basic education in Nigeria through the Literacy Enhancement Assistance Program, or LEAP. Focused in the three states of Kano, Lagos, and Nasarawa, LEAP promotes improved teaching of literacy and numeracy skills in primary grades three through six by:

  • providing in-class training and teaching aids to teachers through an innovative Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) program;
  • encouraging communities to become actively involved in their schools through the development and implementation of literacy and numeracy agendas;
  • supporting the collection and use of education data in school policy and budget development.
Key results: The LEAP program was launched in November 2001. To date, the Mission is working with 327 primary schools (including 78 Islamic schools) from the three target states. Over 90,000 primary students attend these schools. In addition, 194 Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) affiliated with the participating schools have been engaged to increase community involvement in primary education. The Mission has enlisted the full support of the state governments for the primary education program. Each state has committed to contributing $200,000 of counterpart funds to support the program in 2003, in addition to already supplying a variety of resources at the federal and state levels, including office space, vehicles, and free radio time for the interactive radio instruction program. Improvements in literacy and numeracy performance will be measured at the end of the 2002-2003 school year against baseline data collected at the beginning of the year.

A separate program focused on youth workforce education supports improved, market-driven skills training for Nigeria's unemployed, out-of-school youth. An important component of this program is the incorporation of HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention and conflict mitigation in the "life skills" curriculum. This program is being implemented in Delta, Lagos, and Kano state