The Kaduna State government has unveiled its annual school census and out-of-school children mapping report, revealing that more than 187,000 children in the state are currently out of school. Officials identified economic hardship as a major factor behind the figure, presenting the findings as a significant step towards tackling the challenge of out-of-school children through data driven planning rather than guesswork.
The report was presented during a data dissemination exercise that brought together education stakeholders, government officials and development partners. It covered the 2025 and 2026 annual out-of-school children mapping and school census, and was described as an effort to capture the current realities of the state's education sector and to shape the interventions needed to address them.
Governor Uba Sani, who was represented at the event by his deputy, said the findings would guide education planning and strengthen efforts to get more children back into the classroom. He framed the exercise as the basis for concrete policy rather than a one-off count, stressing that the state intends to act on what the data reveals about where children are being left behind.
Among the measures the government has pledged are the construction of additional schools, the recruitment of more teachers and the creation of a safer environment for learning. Officials linked these steps directly to the mapping results, arguing that new classrooms and staff must be targeted at the communities where the largest numbers of children are out of school.
The report also set out who the affected children are. According to the findings, boys account for 57 percent of out-of-school children in the six to eleven age range, while more than 91 percent of the affected households cited a lack of financial resources as the reason their children are not in school. That points to poverty, rather than distance or the absence of schools alone, as the central barrier.
The scale of the wider system was also outlined. According to the Kaduna State Bureau of Statistics, more than 2.58 million learners are currently enrolled across 5,416 schools in the state. Set against that enrolment base, the number of children still outside the system underlines how much work remains despite existing investment in education.
Officials said that for the first time the exercise shows where out-of-school children actually live, not just by local government area but down to the ward and the household, along with details such as their gender, whether they have disabilities and their ages. The state argues that this level of detail will allow for targeted, data informed community interventions aimed at returning children to school through sustained investment.