Immediate-past Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology in Kwara State, Alhaji Bolaji Abdullahi, has said that the Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria has greatly improved education in the country.

Speaking with journalists in Ilorin during a review of his ministry’s activities when he was the education commissioner, he said the programme substantially helped in advancing education in Kwara State in particular.

ESSPIN recently inaugurated some lesson plans for primary one to three in Kwara State.

He also said 33 per cent of pupils in primary four in the public schools in the state could not read in 2007, adding that only 10 per cent were unable to read at present.

While unveiling the comprehension status of the pupils in the same class in the state, he said 73 per cent of the pupils had zero comprehension of what they had read in 2007, adding that in 2011 the statistics had reduced to between 25-49 per cent.

ESSPIN has been implemented in six states of the federation: Enugu, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Kwara and Lagos states.

Abdullahi said, “I went through 2010 reports of Monitoring of Learning Achievement in six ESSPIN states. The exercise conducted in June last year tested pupils in primary two and four in various aspects of literacy and numeric against the curriculum Standard set by the National Education Research and Development Council.

“When I first got this report a couple of months back, I immediately requested for supplementary reports from ESSPIN. A Kwara State specific report measured against the learning outcome benchmark defined by Kwara State in 2008 and a comparison of this where possible with the World Bank DFID 2007 baseline survey report of testing of primary four pupils in Kaduna, Kano and Kwara states.

“I requested for these reports because I wanted to see if we have made any progress since 2007, when measured against other states and when measured against our own learning target. Whereas in 2007 about 33 per cent of pupils in primary four in Kwara state could not read at all, the 2010 report indicates that only about 10 per cent of primary four pupils in Kwara State could not read.”

The former commissioner stated that though the states under the ESSPIN project were yet to attain the minimum standard of the NERDC, Kwara State had performed better than some of other states.