UK-funded PLANE school programme ends after reaching 2m children in north
- The UK-funded PLANE education programme has closed after seven years in northern Nigeria.
- It reached more than two million children and trained over 25,000 teachers, officials said in Kaduna.
- Five states pledged to keep the reforms going, but funding and staffing remain the test.
A British-funded education programme that worked in northern Nigeria since 2019 has ended, leaving federal and state governments to keep its gains going.
The Partnership for Learning for All in Nigeria (PLANE) was celebrated at a close-out event in Kaduna on Wednesday. According to the British High Commission, it reached more than two million girls and boys and helped train over 25,000 teachers and facilitators.
PLANE was funded by the UK and run by DAI, UNICEF, Save the Children and other partners. It focused on foundational literacy and numeracy, child protection, and learning for children affected by emergencies.
For ordinary families in the north, the question is simple: will the reading and maths support, teacher training and school materials continue now that the money and the programme office are gone?
What the states are saying
Education commissioners from Kaduna, Kano, Jigawa, Borno and Yobe said their states would carry the reforms forward. They praised PLANE's work on teacher development and school systems.
Kaduna's Commissioner for Education, Prof. Abubakar Sani Sambo, gave state figures: more than 6,300 teachers and about 700 head teachers trained, 737,000 learning materials distributed, and over 25,000 out-of-school children brought back to learning across the state's 23 local government areas.
Governor Uba Sani, represented by Deputy Governor Hadiza Balarabe, said Kaduna's basic school enrolment rose from 2.17 million in 2022 to more than 2.57 million in 2025. He put out-of-school children in the state at 187,719, down from an estimated 535,000 when he took office, and said education got 25 per cent of Kaduna's ₦985.9 billion 2026 budget.
Borno's Commissioner for Education, Abba Wakilbe, said the programme's real test comes now. "The legacy of PLANE will not be measured by what it has done, but by what we achieve from it afterwards," he said.
British High Commissioner to Nigeria Pete Vowles said the UK's education partnership with Nigeria would continue. "PLANE is closing. The UK's education partnership with Nigeria is not," he said.
Dr Folake Olatunji-David, Acting Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, said reliable data and policies that reach girls, children with disabilities and displaced learners matter as much as enrolment numbers.
What happens next
The states have promised to fold PLANE's methods into their own policies and budgets. Whether that funding holds, and whether trained teachers stay in classrooms, will decide if the gains last.
