UK-funded PLANE ends after reaching 2m pupils and 25,000 teachers in the north
- The UK-funded PLANE education programme has closed after supporting more than two million children and training over 25,000 teachers since 2019.
- At a close-out event in Kaduna, officials warned the gains could be lost without state funding.
- Kaduna said basic school enrolment rose from 2.17 million in 2022 to over 2.5 million in 2025.
A British-funded education programme in northern Nigeria is winding down after reaching more than two million children and helping train over 25,000 teachers and facilitators since 2019.
The Partnership for Learning for All in Nigeria (PLANE) was marked at a close-out event in Kaduna on Wednesday. It was run by DAI, UNICEF, Save the Children and other partners, and covered school reforms, early reading and maths skills, child protection and learning for children hit by emergencies.
The main worry raised at the event was what happens after the money stops. Officials and education stakeholders said state governments must fold the programme's successful ideas into their own policies and budgets, or the progress could slip away.
Kaduna reports enrolment gains
British High Commissioner to Nigeria Pete Vowles said the programme showed what governments, teachers, communities and development partners can do together. "PLANE is closing. The UK's education partnership with Nigeria is not," he said at the event.
Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani, represented by Deputy Governor Hadiza Sabuwa Balarabe, said the states now carry the responsibility. "PLANE has done its part. It is now up to us, the state governments, to keep the progress going," he said.
The governor said basic school enrolment in Kaduna rose from 2.17 million in 2022 to more than 2.57 million in 2025. Household mapping across the state's 23 local government areas found 187,719 out-of-school children, he said, down from an estimated 535,000 when he took office.
Kaduna's Commissioner for Education, Prof. Abubakar Sani Sambo, said more than 25,000 out-of-school children in the state had returned to learning.
At the federal level, the Acting Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Dr Folake Olatunji-David, said keeping the gains would mean paying closer attention to whether children actually attend school, stay enrolled, finish, and learn the basics. She urged states to build the interventions into their education policies and budgets.
Borno State's Commissioner for Education, Engr. Abba Lawan Wakilbe, put the test plainly: what matters is not what the programme did, but what governments achieve with it afterwards.
What happens next
PLANE's funding period is over. The coming state budgets will show whether the training, teaching methods and child protection work continue, or fade with the programme.
