The Federal Government has concluded plans to abolish the policy separating Junior Secondary Schools from Senior Secondary Schools after revealing that more than 20 million Nigerian children drop out before reaching the senior secondary level.
Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, announced the policy shift on Tuesday in Abuja during the inauguration of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) Ministerial Implementation and Monitoring Committee, describing the decades-old arrangement as a failed experiment that has worsened access to education.
According to the minister, findings by the Federal Government exposed a glaring imbalance in the country's education system, with about 80,000 public primary schools feeding into only 15,000 junior secondary schools, a disparity he said has created massive congestion at the JSS level while leaving many senior secondary schools underutilised.
"We have 20 million dropouts from primary school to JSS. Where are those students? We also found we have 80,000 public primary schools and only about 15,000 junior secondary schools. That's a one-to-eight ratio," Alausa said.
He noted that the separation policy, which requires Junior and Senior Secondary Schools to operate independently with separate principals and administrative structures, has failed to improve learning and has instead created unnecessary bureaucratic bottlenecks.
"This disarticulation policy has failed. We will phase it out. We can't be creating positions because we want to create director-level offices while we harm our education system. It's about doing what is best for every Nigerian child," the minister declared.
Alausa disclosed that the proposal to formally abolish the policy would be presented at the next meeting of the National Council on Education for approval.
He said the reform forms part of the Federal Government's broader strategy to improve school enrolment, increase the transition rate from junior to senior secondary education and reduce the country's alarming number of out-of-school children.
Expressing confidence in the administration's education reforms, the minister said, "This government will not fail. We are fixing it."
At the event, Alausa also inaugurated a ministerial implementation and monitoring committee chaired by Prof. Rashid Aderinoye to supervise UBEC-funded Smart Schools, Bilingual Schools and Alternative Schools across the country.
The committee has been mandated to ensure that the projects are completed, handed over to state governments and opened for learning without further delay.
Although UBEC has invested billions of naira in hundreds of education projects nationwide, the minister lamented that many of the facilities remain abandoned, unfinished or yet to admit learners, describing the situation as a waste of scarce public resources.
Nigeria continues to face one of the world's worst education crises, with millions of school-age children, particularly those in rural, underserved and conflict-affected communities, still out of school.
Education experts have repeatedly argued that tackling the crisis requires not only building more classrooms but also ensuring that completed schools are functional, adequately staffed and accessible, while removing policy bottlenecks that discourage pupils from progressing through the education system.
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