The Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC, will commence a 10-year overhaul of Nigeria’s basic education system in October, introducing a new intervention model designed to address the comprehensive needs of individual schools.
Under the Universal Basic Education Roadmap 2026–2035, states will no longer be expected to focus on isolated interventions such as classroom blocks or furniture where other critical deficiencies exist in the same schools.
The new approach, described by UBEC as the “whole school approach,” requires State Universal Basic Education Boards, SUBEBs, to identify and address the comprehensive needs of schools before their action plans are approved for funding.
UBEC Executive Secretary, Dr Aisha Garba, disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at a two-day consultative workshop involving chairmen of the 36 SUBEBs and UBEC directors.
She also unveiled the Basic Education Action Plan Management System, BEAPMS, a digital platform designed to strengthen planning, transparency, monitoring and public accountability in the implementation of basic education projects.
Garba said the reforms were aimed at moving UBEC away from executing disconnected projects that failed to address the broader requirements of schools.
According to her, interventions would henceforth be based on the actual needs of individual schools rather than the execution of isolated projects.
“For any state to do renovation, you have to do a whole school approach. A whole school approach means, you take a school and you look at all the gaps,” she said.
She added: “You don’t just put in furniture or you drop two blocks of classrooms and you leave because you want to give out awards. No, you have to take in all the comprehensive needs of that particular school.”
Garba said a school requiring renovation would be assessed comprehensively to determine other deficiencies, including fencing, toilets, furniture and digital facilities.
She added that where additional classrooms were required because of increased enrolment, the intervention would also consider the corresponding need for toilet facilities and other supporting infrastructure.
UBEC changes funding formula
Garba also disclosed that UBEC had revised its matching grant formula to give states greater flexibility in deploying intervention funds according to their specific education needs.
She said the previous arrangement placed considerable emphasis on new infrastructure, even in states where the major challenges were rehabilitation and upgrading of existing schools.
“The new formula allows each state to look at their own needs. If their needs on the ground is furniture, if their needs on the ground is renovating all schools to ensure that our schools now have fencing, computers, and furniture, then they are allowed to do that,” she said.
The revised framework, she added, could also accommodate other priorities identified by states, including enrolment materials and additional teachers where increased enrolment had created pressure on existing facilities.
Parents, communities to track projects
The UBEC boss said the newly introduced BEAPMS would open up the implementation process to greater community scrutiny, with parents and community members able to monitor projects, funding and the quality of interventions delivered in schools.
“This will also allow us to bring in the community to be part of the monitoring of the projects that we do on the ground,” Garba said.
She said details of funds accessed by individual states and the projects being executed would also be published on UBEC’s website.
“With that, community can hold us accountable to the money we have accessed from UBEC, and then also the projects we’re doing on the ground, as well as the quality of projects we’re doing,” she said.
According to Garba, BEAPMS had been under development for more than a month, while SUBEB chairmen had been onboarded ahead of its full implementation in October.
Speaking on the significance of the consultation, the Dean of SUBEB Chairmen, Prof. Shehu Adaramaja, said the meeting would enable stakeholders to establish a common direction for basic education development over the next decade.
Adaramaja, who is also Chairman of Kwara State SUBEB, said the workshop would focus on strategies for expanding access, improving quality and strengthening basic education management systems.
“In the next two days, we’ll pay attention to all the strategies and the initiatives toward the development of a roadmap for the next 10 years on how to provide access, provide quality service, and of course, strengthen our systems in line with our new basic education management system,” he said.
He explained that the workshop was structured as a hands-on exercise, with directors of research and statistics expected to contribute to frameworks that would guide the respective states’ basic education action plans.
Adaramaja also noted that UBEC’s intervention mandate had expanded beyond physical infrastructure to include other components necessary for improving basic education delivery.
Earlier, UBEC Director of Physical Planning, Arc. Nura Ibrahim, said the consultation would provide an opportunity for stakeholders to review and validate the proposed 10-year roadmap, drawing on their technical expertise and experience in implementing basic education programmes across the country.
