The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has trained 32 education managers on capacity building in Bauchi State.

The exercise is being implemented under the USAID Learn to Read Project.

Abdullahi Abubakar, budget planning and policy reform specialist, USAID Learn to Read Project, stated this at the end of a three-day training exercise on Saturday in Bauchi.

He said the exercise was designed to expose education managers and planners to using education sector performance assessment tools.

Mr Abubakar said the state’s Ministry of Education requested technical assistance from USAID in training the participants, adding that UNICEF funded the exercise.

“Being a technical assistance project, we have to respond favourably to our partners, especially by adding value to the education sector in the country.

“We are doing skill transfer to education MDAs managers on how to use the expert tools to generate Annual Education Sector Performance report. It’s a sort of skill transfer through our technical assistance,” he said.

He said the participants from the state Ministry of Education, State Universal Basic Education Board, Bauchi State Agency for Mass Education, State Agency for Nomadic Education, and Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning attended the exercise.

Mr Abubakar said the participants were expected to acquire skills in using the annual education sector performance tools to enable them to report annual education sector performances.

“This is because before now, education MDAs didn’t report their education performance according to the global best practices”.

Also speaking, Saadatu Usman, coordinator, Development Partners, Bauchi state Ministry of Education, said the selected participants were the data banks of the ministry, hence the training.

One of the participants, Awwal Bala, said they had learnt so many things in the training exercise.

Mr Bala, the head of the education management information system, Bauchi state agency for mass education, said they were being exposed to the importance of data-keeping.

(NAN)