
Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has said that his adminstration deliberately focuses on human capital index, including health and education, as well as policies that can create the future for the young ones and give them the capacity to aid their growth
He spoke while receiving the Federal House of Representatives Committee on Basic Education and Services, led by Prof. Julius Ihovnbere on a courtesy call on him at the Lagos House, Alausa, Ikeja, on Monday.
The governor noted that the UBEC is an arm of government, and one of those interventions of government that has succeeded overtime.
Commending the committee for giving Lagos priority,the governor said: “It is true that we have not accessed the 2019, our own funds are there. We have also made provisions for 2020 so that we can indeed take both together and have a wider pool of funds to be able to respond to that sector.
“Beyond that, it is to take us back and explain to you what we are doing in education. Education this year in particular has a budget of almost 12 percent.”
He said: “Beyond the budget, it is also to say that we deliberately went down to intervene in the primary school level.
“To date, if my numbers are not missing, we have done over 100,000 benches and tables for the schools. We deliberately went down to the primary schools and said that we needed to put funding on physical infrastructure.”
On curriculum and content development, Sanwo-Olu noted: “We are spending billions of naira and there is a scheme that is called EKOEXCEL, which is our own intervention in the primary schools and we are taking them from the root. We realised that one of the things that you can give is to ensure that the teachers and the learning environment is second to none.
“Each of the lesson notes of the teachers, irrespective of where they are, has been downloaded on the tablets. They have the same content in terms of learning capabilities of the teachers. So issues around writing lesson notes are all documented on the tablets and every teacher has the same standard that is expected in terms of learning and lesson outcomes.
“We are also buying textbooks and it is a full complement to intervene in the education space and we believe that it is from the primary school that you need to give them that proper foundation. So it is from there before they get to secondary schools that they have that root; solid foundation and we believe that we can change the skyline or the space from that place.”