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 Religious schools (often categorized among public schools in government data and as
such no special categories have beenmade for them in the Nigerian Digest of Education),
include Christian and Islamic schools. Little is known about spread Christian religious
schools at basic education level in Nigeria other than those that offer formal curriculum
and are counted in the education digest as private schools. Contrarily, there are different
kinds of Islamic schools: those that offer formal education curriculum and Qur’anic
schools. There is a third category, which is an integrated Qur’anic school. Within the
Qur’anic school system, both integrated and nonintegrated, three kinds exist: Qur’anic,
Islamiyya, and Tsangaya (see section 2.8)
Notwithstanding, basic education is declared free and compulsory for children between five and
fifteen years old in Nigeria.
3.4.2. Major Education Reforms
The development and various reforms in Nigeria's education sector have been widely influenced
by global dynamics and international organisations. The foundation of Nigeria's education
system was laid in the pre-colonial and colonial era, with the various colonial ordinances from
1882 up to the establishment of regional education laws in 1954. Various post-independent
education reforms were largely adjustment to make education serve development needs of the
country and also fit into various international conventions on education. In the basic education
sub-sector, the early post-independent reforms (including some 1966 to 1979 education edicts)
were largely regional affairs and were marked by a take-over of schools by governments from
individuals and non-governmental organizations, an institutionalization of school management
boards and unification of teaching service (Fabunmi, 2005; Imam, 2012). This was a period of
initial nationwide effort to accelerate universal access to education through the Universal
Primary Education (UPE) programme. Other key features of the first two decades of the
country’s independence were efforts by the government to control and regulate education,
convening of a National Curriculum Conference in 1969 to review and reorient national
education goals, nationwide enrolment campaign through the UPE and, promulgation of a
National Policy on Education in 1977 that has been regarded as Nigeria’s first indigenous policy
on education and subsequent integration of the new education policy direction in the 1979
Constitution (Imam, 2012). The 1979 Constitution particularly supported the provision of
education for everyone and ensuring equal educational opportunities for everyone at all levels.
Nigeria began a nationwide provision of universal primary education in 1976 with the aim of
closing regional and gender gaps in education. In 1999, a Universal Basic Education (UBE) was
introduced (formalized with the enactment of the UBE Act in 2004), which seeks to achieve both
the national objective of closing the gender and regional gaps as well as achieving existing global
targets, such as the Education for All (EFA) and Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
Another influence of the international agenda on the Nigerian education is the association of the
National Policy on Education (NPE) with the 1960s pan-African educational reform movement
that promoted educational reform as part of the broad nation-building strategies of Africa
countries that emerged from colonialism (FME, 2011). The NPE has been severally reviewed in
relation to more recent global agendas such as the Education for All (EFA) and United Nations
Millennium Development Goals (MDG); the most recent version, 6th edition used in this report,
was released in 2013 (see FME, 2013). The return of democracy in Nigeria in May 1999,
contributed to bring the country fully into the mainstream global education strategies, which
influenced the introduction of a Universal Basic Education (UBE).