UNICEF and Save the Children International have reaffirmed their commitment to supporting the Kaduna State Government’s efforts to reduce the number of out-of-school children after a new mapping exercise identified 187,719 children currently outside the formal education system.
The commitment was announced during the presentation of the 2026 Out-of-School Children Mapping and 2025/2026 Annual School Census reports under the Reaching Out-of-School Children (ROOSC) Project in Kaduna.
Save the Children Nigeria Country Director, Duncan Harvey, described the exercise as a landmark achievement that provides, for the first time, detailed information on the location, age, gender and disability status of out-of-school children across Kaduna’s 23 local government areas.
The mapping covered 360,319 households and found that 60.2 per cent of affected children had never enrolled in school, while 39.8 per cent had dropped out after initial enrolment.
Harvey identified poverty, insecurity, child labour, inadequate learning facilities, teacher shortages, disability-related barriers and harmful social norms as major drivers of the crisis.
He said Save the Children remains committed to helping Kaduna achieve the project’s target of returning 100,000 children to school.
According to him, the programme has already enrolled thousands of learners in accelerated education programmes, transitioned children into formal schools and distributed learner kits and assistive devices to vulnerable pupils.
UNICEF Chief of Field Office, Dr. Gerida Birukila, said the digitised school census gives policymakers the information needed to make better education decisions and pledged the agency’s continued support for inclusive education.
Project Coordinator Ezra Angai said the new data would help refine interventions to ensure children not only return to school but also remain in classrooms, while Kaduna State Statistician-General Dr. Bukar Baba Alhaji said the exercise relied on geospatial mapping, digital data collection and more than 1,200 trained enumerators.
The ROOSC Project is a five-year initiative implemented by the Kaduna State Government with support from Save the Children International, UNICEF, the Islamic Development Bank, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, Education Above All and the Global Partnership for Education.
