UBEC to Begin 10-Year Basic Education Roadmap in October

The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), will begin implementing its 10-year Universal Basic Education Roadmap 2026–2035 in October.

The commission’s Executive Secretary, Dr. Aisha Garba, announced this in Abuja on Monday at a two-day consultative workshop involving chairmen of the 36 State Universal Basic Education Boards, SUBEBs, and UBEC directors.

Garba said the roadmap would replace fragmented interventions with a whole-school approach that addresses the full range of needs in individual schools.

She also unveiled the Basic Education Action Plan Management System, BEAPMS, a digital platform designed to strengthen planning, transparency and monitoring of basic education interventions nationwide.

According to her, UBEC now expects states to identify the complete needs of each school before the commission approves their action plans.

“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 new framework would discourage projects that address only one need while leaving other essential facilities unattended.

She explained that a state could no longer renovate a few classrooms or provide furniture without considering other requirements for a functional learning environment.

“You don’t just put in a furniture or you drop two blocks of classrooms and you leave because you want to give out awards. No, you have to take in all the comprehensive needs of that particular school,” she said.

She added that states would have to include facilities such as toilets and perimeter fencing where schools lacked them. Additional classrooms would also have to match toilet capacity with projected enrolment.

The UBEC chief also announced changes to the matching grant formula, allowing states to direct intervention funds towards their most pressing education needs.

She said the previous arrangement placed greater emphasis on new infrastructure, even when some states needed to renovate and improve 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,” Garba said.

She said the revised framework could also accommodate enrolment materials and additional teachers where rising pupil numbers created such needs.

On BEAPMS, Garba said the digital platform would open up the implementation process to greater public scrutiny.

She explained that parents and community members would have access to information that would enable them to monitor projects in their schools.

“This will also allow us to bring in the community to be part of the monitoring of the projects that we do on the ground,” she said.

Garba said UBEC would publish details of funds accessed by each state on its website, alongside information on the projects undertaken.

“With that, community can hold us accountable to the money we have accessed from UBEC, and then also the projects we’re doing on the ground, as well as the quality of projects we’re doing,” she said.

The commission said it had developed the digital platform for more than a month and completed the onboarding of SUBEB chairmen ahead of the October rollout.

Speaking on the roadmap, the Dean of SUBEB Chairmen, Prof. Shehu Adaramaja, said the consultation would help stakeholders agree on a common direction for basic education over the next decade.

Adaramaja, who also chairs the Kwara State SUBEB, said participants would examine strategies for expanding access, improving quality and strengthening basic education management systems.

He described the meeting as a practical exercise, with directors of research and statistics expected to contribute to the development of the framework for state action plans.

He also noted that UBEC’s intervention mandate had expanded beyond physical infrastructure to include other areas critical to effective basic education delivery.

Earlier, UBEC Director of Physical Planning, Arc. Nura Ibrahim, said the workshop would allow stakeholders to review and validate the proposed roadmap.

He said the process would also draw on the technical knowledge and experience of stakeholders involved in implementing basic education programmes across the country.