Stakeholders and policy makers across the education sector in Southwest Nigeria came together to share lessons and proffer solutions to issues that affect quality education across the region. The forum focused on peer learning/experience sharing on good practices, to agree and synergize a common approach for tackling governance bottlenecks in the education sector and to set up a Community of Practice and knowledge repository among education stakeholders in the region.

Participants at the forum included Commissioners and Permanent Secretaries of Ministries of Education and the leadership of State Universal Basic Education Boards from the 6 Southwest states, the Secretary to Lagos State Government, representatives from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL) programme, Chairmen House Committee on Education from Oyo and Osun States, the Osun State Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, a representative from the World Bank and government representatives from the education sector in Kaduna and Edo states. The forum was organised by the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission in collaboration with PERL, on 6^th – 7^th February 2020, in Lagos.

Declaring the forum open, the Secretary to Lagos State Government, Mrs Folashade Jaji recognized that Lagos State and Southwest Nigeria are keen to improve the quality of education and will not relent until the states get it right. She observed that basic education is foundational and crucial, delivered by personnel who are trained at tertiary institutions. She used the opportunity to point out the importance of involving core technocrats from tertiary educational institutions in planning for basic education.

Speaking on the importance of planning and budget for improved education delivery, the Osun State Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget, Prof. Olalekan Yinusa, believes that to achieve robust planning for the education sector, policy makers, implementers and beneficiaries should be involved throughout the process. More so, plans should be backed by data and credible evidence to convince policy makers and implementers on what works and the gaps that need attention.

From the perspective of the World Bank, the Education Specialist, Dr. Olatunde Adekola, shared that the Nigerian education system is large; services therefore, need to be expanded rapidly to serve the country’s teaming population. Using verifiable data, he urged participants to be aware that resources spent on education should be matched with functional educational systems to achieve learning outcomes. He provided evidence that some SW States spend more on education and achieve lower outcomes because of the faulty systems into which these resources are invested, while other states spent less and achieved more because of the existence of more functional education systems. This illustrates that a functional system is the foremost requirement to improving education outcomes.

Education sector representatives from Osun, Oyo, Lagos, Ekiti, Ogun, Ondo, Kaduna and Edo states shared their experiences, good practices, results achieved, challenges, solutions and lessons to enable cross-learning and improvements in education systems across the region. Other lessons shared at the forum included states’ access to the Education Intervention Fund provided by the Universal Basic Education Commission, increasing budget commitments to the education sector, teacher quality and improvements in infrastructure and output of public schools. Lessons around the quality of data to inform school improvement strategies and the need to continually collaborate with development partners was also discussed.

PERL in the SW has facilitated learning in the thematic areas of agriculture and ease-of-doing-business. The programme continues to bring states together to share lessons on education, internal revenue, budget and regional integration.