An appeal has gone to President Muhammadu Buhari to provide mid-day meals to children attending low-cost private schools.
Association for Formidable Education Development (AFED) President Mrs Esther Dada, who made the call yesterday, also asked the government for loans to support the group’s initiative to provide tablets to children from low-income backgrounds.
At a press conference ahead of the group’s 2018 congress holding on Friday, Mrs Dada said by educating children from the lower-rung of the socio-economic ladder, AFED was helping the government reduce the number of out-of-school children.
“The government must also understand that children in low cost schools are there due to inadequate government facilities in some of (the public) schools in such locations where our low-fee schools are prominent and therefore educational right and privileges should be extended to children in low-fee private schools such as we have in public schools. And these privileges should include free feeding programme through the Home Grown feeding project of the Federal Government,” she said.
On the tablet project, Mrs Dada said AFED found from a pilot project supported by Department for International Development (DFID) that computers could boost learning.
“In AFED, we are leveraging on the broad partnership network and its prospects to deliver in the next three years a tablet with preloaded textbooks, workbook, exercises and continuous assessment for every child in the basic education class. This quest might seem huge but with our collective will, it is surmountable as efforts has commenced in the right direction.
“We therefore wish to call on the Federal Government to institute as a matter of urgent national importance special fund from where operators can access affordable loans to support this laudable project. You will agree