Free feeding of pupils begins in El-Rufai's Kaduna State

The government of Kaduna State has started its program of free daily feeding for pupils in government-owned primary schools.

At the inauguration of the program on Monday were
Gov Nasir El-Rufai, District Head of Barnawa , Alhaji Ibrahim Sambo, and Commissioner for Education , Science and Technology, Dr Shehu Adamu.

Speaking at the inauguration which took place at the Aliyu Makama Road Primary School, Barnawa, Kaduna, on Monday, the governor said that the state government would provide free launch for 1.5 million pupils in public primary schools across the state.

He said that the programme would directly create 17,000 jobs for food vendors, each of whom will need to employ extra hands to facilitate the delivery of the services.

His words:
“Every school day from today, the Kaduna State Government will be providing a meal for 1.5 million pupils. It is an unprecedented undertaking in this state, but one that we solemnly pledged to do when we were campaigning.

“It is a challenge in terms of its scale, cost and the logistics required to deliver the meals everyday. But our children deserve this, and more.

“We launch the programme today as a direct intervention in the health of our children, situating our schools as places to promote education and nutrition.

“The school feeding is a separate plank of our initiative to expand access to education, to ensure that every child can have nine years of free, decent basic education, no matter the income level of their parents.”

“We began our education programme with the recruitment of teachers for core subject areas, conducted a needs-assessment to identify how we can strengthen the capacity of current teachers and then announced the removal of all bureaucratic impediments to the career advancement and sense of fulfillment of professional teachers in the public school system.

“We made it clear that a professional teacher can rise to Grade Level 17, without having to stop being a teacher.

“Having taken steps to raise the morale and capacity of teachers as the front line workers in delivering quality education, the government began addressing the question of the physical condition of the theatre in which they work: the schools.

“We inherited a baleful legacy of dilapidated schools, inadequate classrooms, and no furniture for 50% of the pupils. The schools also often lacked water and toilet facilities. The All Progressives Congress (APC) government of Kaduna State responded by launching a school rehabilitation programme.

“It is a massive commitment to fix the more than 4,000 public primary schools in the state and transform them into conducive places for the delivery of quality education. We will strive to complete the rehabilitation within our term of office.”