3. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

PHOTO: LAURETTE ABUYA/ACTIONAID

SECTION 3. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Nigeria has a very long way to go to deliver inclusive basic education, especially to the most marginalised and excluded. Given the lack of credible official figures on children with disabilities in Nigeria, or the extent of their exclusion from education, it is hard to know the full scale of the issue.

What we do know, however, is that there is very little public provision for children with disabilities, and where there is it is either in private or segregated schools (and often both). There is little political will or funding to back a move towards inclusive education; and without substantially more of both, Nigeria’s draft federal inclusive education strategy cannot hope to be operationalised.

Teacher numbers are inadequate to provide quality and inclusive basic education for all children. The education workforce is highly unequally spread across the country and not sufficiently funded to support workforce development for inclusive education. This is manifest in a lack of teacher training and a persistent shortage of qualified teachers, both overall and in terms of specialised training, at state and federal levels.

Nigeria has a very long way to go to deliver inclusive basic education, especially to the most marginalised and excluded.

Bringing the NPIEN to life requires a significantly boosted workforce, and for all States to develop, finance and implement their own strategies. Chronic levels of underfunding of public education means that more state funding is needed, including greater utilisation of the UBEC fund, as well as significant increases in overall education sector funding, through concrete actions to boost overall government revenues.