The Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, on Wednesday, said his government is kicking off an enumeration exercise to collate the data for centres of learning across the state.
Obaseki, who disclosed this during an education stakeholders’ workshop, at the Government House, in Benin City, said the data will help the government effectively plan and implement policies and programmes to sustain the successes recorded in the education sector.
He said appointees, including Special Assistants (SAs) and Senior Special Assistants (SSAs) will be deployed to various communities in the state to collate the data to help the government in planning and implementation.
Obaseki, “In every ward and community in Edo, we want to be able to identify where people are learning; we want to know that first. We want to be able to locate those buildings where people are learning. Once we have done that, then educational experts will go in there and identify the type of learning that is taking place there.
“If they are teaching children under the age of three, this means it’s a nursery school and we have some questionnaires that would be sent to them because there are roads and buildings you should build before teaching children of that age.”
He added that the enumerators will be trained and provided with the necessary tools to collate the right data.
Earlier, the Edo State Commissioner for Education, Dr. Joan Osa-Oviawe, said that the enumeration exercise would cover private and public schools, technical and vocational education, colleges and lecture centres across the 18 local government areas of the state.
Osa-Oviawe said SSAs and SAs have been proposed as enumerators for relevant community mapping, which include lecture centres, artisans and clustering of private schools with their locality.
On her part, the Commissioner for Physical Planning, Urban and Regional Development, Isoken Omo said, “The beauty about using the SAs and SSAs is that they know these places and they are based in the localities; they know these places street by streets; they can give you the lists.”
