By Meletus EZE
The Chairman of Principals of Unity Schools, Mr Mohammad Manko, says Federal Government’s annual budgetary allocations had ensured improvement of infrastructure in unity schools.
Manko, who is also Principal of Federal Government Academy, Suleja, said this on Monday.
He stressed that the prompt releases of the budgetary allocations would further improve the current situation.
He was speaking against the backdrop of the National Council on Education’s recent call on the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in order to arrest the decay in the education sector.
He also said that there had been a general improvement in students’ performances in both West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and National Examination Council (NECO) in unity schools across the country.
He said that the improvement was due to the government’s resolve to raise the standard of education in the 104 unity schools across the federation.
On the teacher-students ratio, he said the Federal Ministry of Education was employing new teachers in the efforts to decongest the classrooms for effective teaching and learning.
“Even in places where you have congestion like federal unity schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the ministry has made efforts to redeploy them to nearby places.
“This is being done so that there can be equity in terms of posting of teachers especially in the area of Mathematics, English and science subjects.
“Also a lot of improvement is coming up in terms of infrastructure; things are improving gradually and we will surely get there,” he said.
However, a teacher in one of the government schools, who pleaded anonymity, said shortage of manpower and infrastructure were the bane of basic education in the FCT.
She added that the ratio of teachers to students in the FCT was a major problem.
“We have shortage of teachers in our schools.
“You find one teacher teaching between 70 to 80 students in one class and that same teacher will teach up to four to five arms.
“How can one teacher handle these numbers of students?
“Another problem is lack of infrastructure.
”The classrooms are overcrowded, lockers and chairs are not even enough for the students,” she said.
Also, the National President of National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Mr Danielson Bamidele, said the association had constituted a committee to take needs assessment tour of tertiary institutions in the country.
He said the public tertiary institutions with dilapidated structures were not receiving adequate funding from the government to rehabilitate the dilapidated lecture halls and hostels on campuses.
“We feel that government needs to do more.
“In fact we are going to embark on campus tour to document all those dilapidated structures that TETFund has failed to do with the huge sum of money given to them over the years.
“We are documenting all those things.
“We have a committee working on it headed by myself. We are going to move round and ascertain all these things and even present it for you (media) to see.”
