Britain 'Wasting' £230m in Aid to Nigerian Schools - Britain Pledged to Spend a Further £126m by 2019 Despite Flaws

Afrik Update


By Jason Groves

                      The study warns aid isn't getting to frontline staff - despite Britain pouring in £102m into educational schemes

A £230million British aid programme to boost schools in Nigeria has produced ‘no major improvement in pupil learning’, a study warns today.

The Independent Commission on Aid Impact says UK-funded education programmes are struggling to make any difference to Nigeria’s chaotic education system.

Britain has poured £102million into education in ten of Nigeria’s 36 states during the last seven years, and is due to spend a further £126million by 2019.

But the report raises serious questions about whether the Department for International Development is achieving value for money from the project.

It found that around a third of the eligible children – an estimated 3.7million – were still not in school, while those that were received little by way of education.

                                                 Teachers were allowing children were left to play football instead of attending classes

             

The study also found many rural schools were affected by a chronic lack of teachers, with staff frequently not turning up for work. 

A researcher visited one Dfid-funded school in rural Nigeria to find almost all the teachers were absent, leaving the pupils to play football outside.

‘It was the only activity at the school,’ the report says. 

‘A bell rang but none of the pupils moved towards the classrooms. When asked about the bell, the boys said that it signalled a break – the football continued uninterrupted.’

‘Dfid’s education programme in Nigeria operates in a very challenging environment, with too few effective teachers, poor infrastructure and unpredictable state funding all contributing to poor learning outcomes for pupils in basic education.

‘Our review indicates no major improvement in pupil learning.’

                                                            

The report warns that Dfid’s strategy of pumping resources into improving the overall school system was ‘not an appropriate strategy to tackle the most severe problems in the weakest schools’.

It also says there is a danger that the policy of supporting secular teaching in Nigeria’s many Islamic schools could backfire, with pupils boycotting lessons in some areas in protest.

And concerns were raised about whether money is making it through Nigeria’s bureaucracy to the front line.

A trainee teacher told researchers that she and others were giving up because their scholarship money had not been released by the state government. 

The report is embarrassing for Dfid, which has more than doubled the aid programme to Nigeria in recent years. Britain is due to hand the country £1billion over four years, despite warnings that corruption is widespread.

But sources at Dfid questioned the findings of the watchdog, which was set up last year to report to Parliament on the fast-growing aid budget. 

A spokesman for the department said: ‘This was a limited inquiry in that the team only visited 1 per cent of schools, most of which were in only one state in Nigeria, and they did not take into account the most recent evidence of the projects’ progress.