“This is what Gov. Isa Yuguda is doing and I commend his commitment and consistency,” Baba said.
All the same, Malam Ibrahim Labaran, a teacher in Government Comprehensive Day Secondary School, Bauchi, blamed the students’ poor performance in WAEC examinations on the Federal Government’s nine-year basic education policy.
He explained that the policy, which allowed the automatic promotion of students to the next class, regardless of their performance in promotion exams, encouraged laziness on the part of the students.
Labaran argued that the policy had somewhat compromised set standards, particularly those stipulating that students ought to score a minimum of 40 per cent in school promotion exams before being moved to the next class.
“The implication of the current policy is that students, who are unqualified and ill-prepared to move to the next class, are moved, with little or no attention given to their ability to cope. [eap_ad_1] “As a result, most of the students, especially those in senior secondary schools, often find it difficult to cope with the academic demands because of their weak academic background.
“This is one of the reasons why we continue to witness mass failure in Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations in many schools across the country,’’ he said.
Nevertheless, Alhaji Nura Tukur, the Treasurer of Bauchi State chapter of Parents Teachers Association (PTA), said that as a concerned stakeholder, the association had been engaging qualified persons to teach the students as volunteer teachers.
He added that the PTA was giving the volunteer teachers some stipend so as to motivate them.
As stakeholders continue to look at ways of dealing with the students’ poor performance in examinations nationwide, observers, however, emphasise that the Bauchi situation is by all means peculiar, considering the resources which state government has committed to the education sector.
They insist that apart from harping on the quality of teachers, pragmatic efforts should be made to routinely release funds for the provision and maintenance of infrastructure, while ensuring that the funds are strictly used for the intended purposes.
The observers cite the case of a Junior Secondary School in Bauchi Local Government Area, whose students were depicted in some newspapers as writing their Junior Secondary School Examinations on the bare floor.
They, therefore, underscore the need for the Bauchi State Government to monitor how funds earmarked for capital projects in the education sector are spent.
“Until that is done, Gov. Yuguda’s funding of the education sector, even if it surpasses the UNESCO benchmark, will continue to remain counter-productive and purposeless,’’ some of the observers say. (NANFeatures)
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