The Federal Government has announced plans to abolish the policy separating junior secondary schools from senior secondary schools, citing evidence that more than 20 million pupils are dropping out before reaching senior secondary education.

The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, made the announcement on Tuesday in Abuja during the inauguration of the Universal Basic Education Commission Ministerial Implementation and Monitoring Committee, describing the disarticulation policy as a failed reform that had worsened access to education rather than improved it.

"We have 20 million dropouts from primary school to junior secondary school. Where are those students? We also found we have 80,000 public primary schools and only about 15,000 junior secondary schools. That's a 1:8 ratio," he said.

Alausa said the shortage of junior secondary schools had resulted in severe overcrowding while many senior secondary schools remained underutilised, and confirmed that a position paper would be presented at the next meeting of the National Council on Education for approval.

"This disarticulation policy has failed. We will phase it out. We can't create positions because we want to create a director level position for people, while we harm our education system. It's about doing what is best for every Nigerian child," he said.

Introduced in 1982 under the National Policy on Education as part of the 6-3-3-4 system, the policy created separate administrative structures for junior and senior secondary schools. Education stakeholders have long criticised it for creating administrative bottlenecks and limiting pupil progression, particularly in areas with insufficient junior secondary schools.

Alausa also raised concerns over Nigeria's learning poverty rate, disclosing that three out of every four children at the basic education level cannot read and understand an age appropriate text by the age of 10.

"In Nigeria today, three out of every four children are learning poorly. That is simply unacceptable," he said, stressing the need to deploy digital technology to address the crisis.

The minister urged state governments to adopt digital learning platforms already developed by the Federal Government, including the Nigeria Learning Passport, Inspire, Ignite, EduRevamp, eLearn, the Greenfield Learning Management System and virtual classroom solutions. He disclosed that the Nigeria Learning Passport currently has about 2.3 million users, describing that figure as extremely low against Nigeria's estimated 67 million learners across primary, junior secondary, and senior secondary schools.

Universal Basic Education Commission Executive Secretary Dr Aisha Garba said 37 smart schools had been established nationwide, with 24 already conducting academic activities, while 30 schools had been established across nine states under the UBEC and Islamic Development Bank Bilingual Education Programme