By Akeem Abas
Ibadan – Gov. Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State on Wednesday received the report of the State Committee on Participatory Management of Schools, saying the recommendations would form the fulcrum of the state’s new education policy.
Ajimobi, who received the report at the State’s Executive Chamber of Governor’s Office, promised to ensure implementation of the recommendations, saying government would do all it could to prevent the education sector from collapse.
He said that countries that were developing were those who used education and technology to drive development, saying they embraced discipline, rule of law and basic tenets of a modern society.
The News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) reports that the 31-man committee inaugurated on July 12 was headed by Prof. Adeniyi Gbadegesin, the Vice-Chancellor, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso.
The committee was to review the status and standard of education in the state as well as recommend suitable and plausible options to government and other relevant means of enhancing the overall standard of education in the state.
In the report presented by Gbadegesin, the committee recommended the categorisation of the existing 631 secondary schools in the state from A1 to B3 and subsequent merging of some of the schools.
It recommended the re-distribution, pre-qualification and re-training of subject teachers to ensure quality of human capital and efficiency in schools.
The committee called for total restructuring and alignments of the various units, organs and department of the state education sector to avoid ambiguity, overlapping functions and inefficiency.
It said that the discrepancy in the data observed should be addressed immediately through a detailed verification exercise of available infrastructure and students enrolment.
The committee also recommended “Schools Based Management Board (SBMB) system for the management of schools in the state, saying the model encourages responsiveness, autonomy, efficiency, quality and low costs flexibility.
The report said: “SBMB has the advantage of decentralising authority and responsibility from state government authorities to school level.
“This will be in the area of school budgets, allocation of resources, monitoring of teachers and students activities, infrastructural development planning, development if shared vision and encouragement of parents, community members in school improvement.”
The report said that the committee had adopted multistage techniques to collect necessary information from stakeholders and visitation to 29 secondary schools distributed divided into urban, semi-urban and rural communities in eight zones.
It said that the data collected reflected discrepancy in the different units of the state’s education sector, saying student enrolment in a particular school by the state ministry stated 325 against the 105 presented by the school’s principal.
The report stated that the information revealed dismal performance of students in the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) from 12th position in 1999 to 27th in 2016.
“We noticed the non-challant attitude of some teachers and under commitment of parents to their children’s education on pronouncement of free education.
“Stakeholders have been cooperating with government and are still willing to cooperate with government
“While government must be in the driving seat, we also need to recognise that the delivery of education is a collective responsibility that involves families, communities, civil societies, Organisations and businesses,” it said.
It added that the committee received 28 memoranda and urged the governor to inaugurate an implementation committee to work out its implementation with a time frame.