Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has announced a dual-pronged strategy to strengthen education, unveiling plans for an executive order to keep school-age children off the streets during school hours alongside a $25 million initiative focused on improving actual learning results.
The announcements were made on Friday in Lagos during the launch of the Lagos Education Access Fund (LEAF) and the inauguration of the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (LASUBEB). The executive order will mandate that no child be seen outside between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. without a valid reason for not being in school, aiming to enforce regular attendance and increase accountability among parents and communities.
The $25 million LEAF initiative, developed with the Education Outcomes Fund and other partners, represents a strategic shift for the state. Governor Sanwo-Olu stated that the focus is moving beyond simply increasing school enrolment to securing measurable improvements in literacy and numeracy. The programme will deploy outcomes-based financing to benefit over 200,000 children.
Specifically, LEAF will target the enrolment of more than 50,000 out-of-school children aged six to 14 through community outreach and interventions that remove barriers to attendance. Concurrently, it will support approximately 150,000 already-enrolled pupils by strengthening foundational literacy and numeracy skills, ensuring classroom presence translates into sustained academic achievement.
“This initiative is not just about funding education; it is about ensuring every investment translates into real learning, real opportunity and measurable outcomes for our children,” Sanwo-Olu said.
The new fund builds upon the state’s Project Zero initiative, launched in 2021 to combat out-of-school children. That programme has successfully identified, tracked, and enrolled over 36,000 children to date. The planned executive order is designed to complement such efforts by legally reinforcing the mandate for school attendance.
The combined approach—using a regulatory order to enforce attendance and a results-focused financing model to enhance learning—signals Lagos State’s intensified commitment to addressing both the access and quality deficits in its basic education system. The success of LEAF is intended to create a framework for scalable, accountable education investment that directly impacts student competency and long-term success.
