The Kogi State Government is set to organise an education summit as part of activities to mark the two years in office of the current administration, which would serve as feedback mechanism and agenda setting for the sector.
The Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Mrs. Rosemary Osikoya, made this known after an unscheduled monitoring and inspection of some schools in Lokoja.
She reaffirmed the commitment to correct foundational problems and attitudinal anomalies that have bedeviled the state education sector for over two decades of its creation.
According to her, the monitoring of teachers and students’ resumption in the state capital revealed many irregularities in the school system due to the past institutional disregard for education.
The commissioner expressed disappointment over the inability of principals and head teachers to keep relevant administrative and academic records of students for future recourse, stressing the need to keep a comprehensive record of all students.
She noted that the teachers were not prepared to teach their students as they all failed to make available their written lesson notes and the curriculum for subjects to be taught in their classes for the day or week.
She called for the updated copies of standard records all the students, and directed the schools’ management to henceforth keep the schools’ comprehensive record in order to enhance government’s policies and decision making.
“When policy makers make certain decisions, people begin to shout about witch-hunting when in actual fact, they are the ones witch-hunting themselves. Many things we saw in the schools we visited today were shocking and totally unacceptable in this information age.
“The problems we are facing in education were caused by the people who work in the sector and they should be the people to correct those anomalies; there must be a paradigm shift,” Osikoya said.
She advised the teachers to go back to the baseline and do things right; have a change of attitude towards their job; train themselves and put their professionalism to work.
Osikoya, who assumed office on January 2, 2018, reiterated the need to tackle foundational problems in education by getting accurate data of all schools and teachers in all public schools in the state before thinking of embarking on an exercise to check their competency.
She restated her commitment towards ensuring that the education policy of the New Direction Agenda of the governor is achieved, calling for the cooperation of all critical stakeholders in building a formidable sector.
The schools visited were Government Girls’ Secondary School (GGSS); LGEA Primary School, Sarkin-Noma, among several other schools visited by other monitoring teams of the ministry.
The Principal of GGSS, Mrs. Habibat Albdulrahman appealed to the government to provide the school a befitting laboratory, additional classrooms and perimeter fencing of the school.
She appealed for Physics, Maths and Chemistry teachers as the school does not have any of them, adding that most of their teachers rarely come to school because they are being owed salaries between 11 to 15 months.
Credit: Thisday
