Foreword

A nation’s position in today’s highly competitive global knowledge economy is directly dependent on the quality of its human capital the aggregate of skills and knowledge imparted to its citizens by its education system. Its highly trained workforce must be able to innovate and compete on the world stage.

But a trained workforce is never the result of accident: it is always the result of a deliberate and conscious plan; and, in order to plan well, a nation needs accurate data. Accurate data is needed to plan, to set priorities, to monitor what is going on and be able to review at the end of it all.

The collection, analysis and interpretation-and use of data and statistics is crucial in all decision making, more especially in all areas and at every stage of the education system. In the effort to provide education for all, in the drive to catch, keep and retain children in school, in the larger fight against poverty and in the need to measure successes in both, the collection of accurate statistics remains crucial.

Unfortunately, it is a matter of great regret that Nigeria has been noted for its notoriety in not keeping accurate, reliable and timely data in the education sector and in other fields. The country’s profile in global reports and in digests of international statistics always shows obvious gaps; and at home allocation of resources to tackle the many challenges of the education sector is not evidence based. Clearly, such a situation shouldn’t remain acceptable.

Effort to change the situation is now in top gear. The Nigeria Digest of Education Statistics, 2014-2016, which is designed to address the need for data in the education sector, and is the third in the series- following the 2006-2010 and 2011-2013 editions- is a masterful effort to marshal education data. This edition presents data from early childhood care education to the tertiary sector, the non-formal sector, a record of funding intervention in the sector, as well as examination statistics. The data presented here allows for further analysis and manipulation by interested stakeholders. And it will certainly address a felt need.