The Federal Government has announced plans to abolish the policy separating Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) and Senior Secondary Schools (SSS), citing its failure to improve educational outcomes and its contribution to the growing number of out-of-school children.
Tunji Alausa made the announcement on Tuesday in Abuja during the inauguration of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) ministerial implementation and monitoring committee.
According to Alausa, the disarticulation policy, which mandates JSS and SSS to operate separately both physically and administratively, has failed to achieve its intended purpose.
“We’re seeing data from, say, like Kaduna and other northern states, because you have one principal for junior secondary schools and another principal for senior secondary schools,” he said.
He noted that while junior secondary schools are overcrowded, many senior secondary schools remain underutilised.
“We have overflowing JSS and empty senior secondary schools. So, I can objectively report today that this disarticulation policy has failed. We will phase it out.
“We can’t be creating positions because we want to create a director level for people while we harm our education system. It’s not right. It’s about doing what is good for every Nigerian child.”
Alausa said the policy has also widened the enrolment gap between primary and secondary education.
According to him, more than 20 million children who enrolled in primary school failed to progress to senior secondary school after dropping out along the education chain.
“We have 20 million dropouts from primary school to JSS. Where are those students? And what we also noticed was that we have 80,000 public primary schools, and junior secondary schools, we have just about 15,000 that ratio one to eight,” Alausa said.
He added that the imbalance reflects years of inadequate government action.
“And if you look at the completion rate. So, it’s us as a government not doing what we need to do, but the previous government might have failed in this regard, but this government will not fail.
“We’re fixing this, so we need to open up as many more opportunities for students to attend these schools, primary schools’ infrastructure. This disarticulation policy has also contributed to this.”
The minister further stated that the UBEC committee has been tasked with ensuring the completion, handover and operational launch of smart schools, bilingual schools and alternative schools funded by UBEC.
He noted that despite significant funding releases by UBEC, many projects remain unfinished, while several completed schools are yet to be handed over to state governments or integrated into state education systems.
Alausa said the committee will focus on monitoring and implementation to ensure the projects translate into improved access to quality education for Nigerian children.