Abia State Government has threatened to shut down substandard private schools, as it moves to improve quality of education in the State.
Kanelechi Nwangwa, commissioner for Education, who revealed this in an interaction with the media in his office in Umuahia, stated that the exercise will start, Monday, January, 13, 2020.
Nwangwa noted that the planned clampdown on substandard schools, would erase the negative education that majority of the substandard private schools are inculcating in the children.
The Commissioner emphasised that any school that does not meet the minimum standard requirement will be shutdown.
According to him, no school that run in residential buildings, warehouses, church halls, village/town halls and other make-shift places, will survive the clampdown.
Minimum requirement for registration of a private primary school in Abia include, Four (4) plots of land, at least three classrooms with a dimension of 9m x 12m, administrative block, reading room/library, basic health scheme and toilet facilities.
The school should also have games field-15m x 15m, qualified head teacher that must obtain at least NCE and be registered with Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) with not less four years of teaching experience, other teachers must have at least NCE and must be registered with the TRCN and farm land of about four plots.
“Utilities like borehole, electricity supply and firefighting equipment, ICT facilities of at least two computers, bank account with N3 million to protect the interest of the staff and forestall exploitation before adequate income starts flowing”.
For Secondary School, the minimum standard requirement include, “Functional clinic, B.Ed/ BA or B.Sc plus PGDE and five years of experience for a principal that must be registered with TRCN, assembly and examination hall, guidance, a workshop, a laboratory, counseling unit and a bank account of N5 million.
Nwangwu said, “We found out that our people have taken going to school, as the same thing as been educated. Most parents send their children to school to get only good in their report cards. Whenever the child doesn’t get 10 over 10 they scold the child.
“The child will grow and believe that going to school is synonymous with coming back with good, which means the child is wasting time. Soon, the child begins to think of how to change his result to please his parents.
“Students don’t fail in schools anymore, because these schools keep deceiving parents that their children are doing well. I went to a particular school and discovered it was a poultry.
“They divided it into two, one side was serving as a school with children, while the other side is filled with birds. You can imagine this kind of scenario. All those miracle centres are empty now, but during May/June WAEC, the place will become a beehive of activities.
“What’s happening? Some people will go bring textbooks, copy answers on the board for children to copy. At the end of the copy, they’ll pass. Are they actually passing? They’re not.
“They’re only coming out with lots of “A” and when you try to find out the meaning of this “A”, you find out that there’s nothing inside it, because it has no substance”.
He continued, “We warned parents to take away their children from those schools that have no address, but they want them to remain there, because they are giving them unmerited grades.
“The child needs to have not only cognitive knowledge, but also affective and psychomotor. A small child comes to school and stay up to 5p.m.
“They deny the child all the other knowledge and retain a tiny part of cognitive. This is not the tomorrow we’re thinking about. People are talking about the timing and what I’m saying is this; I understand the process of moving a child to another school because I’ve been into the system.
“That’s why we shifted the reopening of schools from 6th to 13th January, so that those, who traveled for Christmas, will come back and have the time to put their children in other schools”, he stated.
