The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) will begin implementing its 10-year Universal Basic Education Roadmap, 2026-2035, in the first week of October, its Executive Secretary, Dr Aisha Garba, has said.
Garba disclosed this in Abuja on Monday at a two-day consultative workshop with chairmen of the 36 State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs) and UBEC directors.
She said the roadmap would replace the implementation of isolated infrastructure projects with a ‘whole school approach’ that addresses the comprehensive needs of individual schools.
Garba also unveiled the Basic Education Action Plan Management System (BEAPMS), a digital platform designed to improve planning, transparency and monitoring of basic education interventions nationwide.
Under the new approach, she said, states would have to identify and address all critical gaps in a school before their intervention plans could be approved by UBEC.
‘For any state to do renovation, you have to do a whole school approach. A whole school approach means, you take a school and you look at all the gaps,’ she said.
Garba said the reform would end the practice of constructing classrooms or supplying furniture without providing other essential facilities.
She explained that where a school lacked fencing or toilets, such facilities would be included in its intervention plan, while additional classrooms would be matched with adequate toilet facilities based on projected enrolment.
The UBEC boss also announced a revised matching-grant formula that would allow states to deploy UBEC funds according to their specific education needs.
She said the previous formula focused largely on new infrastructure, while some states now required funding for the maintenance and improvement of existing schools.
‘The new formula allows each state to look at their own needs. If their needs on the ground is furniture, if their needs on the ground is renovating all schools to ensure that our schools now have fencing, have computers, have furniture, then they are allowed to do that,’ she said.
‘The revised framework could also support enrolment materials and additional teachers where states identify increased enrolment as a priority,’ she added.
On BEAPMS, Garba said the platform would allow parents and communities to monitor projects, funding and the quality of interventions in their schools.
She said information on funds accessed by each state and projects being implemented would be published on UBEC’s website.
The UBEC chief said the platform had been in development for more than a month and that SUBEB chairmen had been onboarded ahead of its full implementation in October.
Also speaking, the Dean of SUBEB Chairmen, Prof. Shehu Adaramaja, said the consultation would help stakeholders establish a common direction for basic education delivery over the next decade.
Adaramaja, who is also Chairman of the Kwara State SUBEB, said directors of research and statistics would participate in developing the framework that would guide states in preparing their basic education action plans.
He said UBEC’s intervention mandate was no longer limited to physical infrastructure, with other components being incorporated to strengthen basic education service delivery.
Earlier, UBEC Director of Physical Planning, Arc. Nura Ibrahim, said the workshop would enable stakeholders to review and validate the proposed roadmap based on their technical expertise and experience in implementing basic education programmes across the states.