Author: The Nation

By Yemisi Olaosun and Gbemisola Adesola

Dean of the Southwest  State Universal Basic Education Board and  Chairman of Oyo SUBEB, Dr. Nureni Aderemi Adeniran, has said the board is committed to enhancing and raising the standard of education in the region (Southwest).

He made this known at the quarterly meeting of the Southwest executive chairmen of the Universal Basic Education Board (UBEC), at the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board  (LASUBEB)w.

He said the meeting was to aimed at enhancing the development of basic education in the region, adding that education could not be toyed with.

“Southwest has always been the pace-setting zone in the area of education and we don’t want to relinquish that position to any other zone,” he said.

Nureni said their coming together would enable them speak in one voice and get whatever was their right from the UBEC without any discrimination.

The Chairman of LASUBEB, Hon. Wahab Alawiye-King, said the meeting was imperative to  address, review and resolve issues affecting the affairs of the southwest as regards education.

“We need to put up a collective result to address some of the challenges we have identified,so we will decide and take all the decisions at the meeting to our governor to help with  implementation,” he said.

Others at the meeting were Chairman, Osun SUBEB, Hon. Ajibola Famurewa, and his Ekiti State counterpart, Prof. Femi Akinwumi.

A lecturer in the Department of Microbiology, School of Life Sciences of the Federal University of Technology, Minna, Prof. Frank Adamu Kuta, has said the only credible option to control viral diseases in developing countries is the development of indigenous vaccines rather than importing vaccines that may not serve the purpose.

He also said the identification of genotypes of pathogenic viruses in circulation will also help in controlling viral diseases.

The Professor of Medical Microbiology proffered these solutions when he delivered the university’s 77th Inaugural Lecture entitled:  “Knowing the Molecular Heterogeneity of Human Pathogenic Viruses: My Concern and Your Hope”, at the University Auditorium, Main Campus, Gidan Kwano, Minna.

He noted that viral diseases could best be controlled through prophylactic rather than curative measures.

He stressed the need for synergy between government and non-governmental organisations to fund researches that would target the production of indigenous vaccines to be used for the control of viral diseases.

Kuta said the collaborations would be in funding researches in identifying and circulating genotypes of most pathogenic viruses to serve as data for the development of indigenous vaccines.

He also appealed to the government to direct its attention towards the establishment of regional laboratories, equipped with state-of-the-art facilities that would address problems of diagnosis of viral diseases, particularly during epidemics.

Kuta noted that most of the licensed antiviral drugs in use today were not designed based on rational procedures for effective selective toxicity.

He said this explained why almost all antiviral drugs exhibited severe side effects.

The Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Agriculture (FUNAAB), Abeokuta, Prof. Felix Kolawole Salako, has warned that all hands must be on deck to check the excesses of herdsmen who use their cows to destroy farm lands across the country to avoid food scarcity

Salako, who spoke in a chat with The Nation, lamented that the activities of bandits and herdsmen were assuming a dangerous dimension that should be checked, because a lot of farmers, particularly cassava farmers, were losing their produce to herdsmen.

The don regretted that  most of these farmers were suffering in silence and fast losing their farm lands, noting that the majority of them were forced to harvest their cassava before maturation  for fear of losing it to rampaging cows.

The expert in soil science explained that the country is blessed with fertile soil that if well harnessed is a comparative advantage that could translate to good agricultural yield at the end of each planting season. He called for a comprehensive programme that will integrate job seekers in the country.

“The government should invest in soil survey and evaluation which is the hall mark of a good agricultural return in the long run. This is the time we should go all out to do this so that we can secure the future of the country regarding food.”

He urged parents to be up and doing in close monitoring of their children  to have a better society, noting that the youth need ethical reorientation because   abnormalities look normal in their thinking, hence youth waywardness is very rampant in the society.

By Emma Elekwa, Onitsha

Anambra State Governor, Willie Obiano has promised to rebuild the classrooms destroyed by windstorm at the Father Joseph Memorial High School, Aguleri in Anambra East Local Government Area of the state.

No fewer than 100 buildings were reportedly destroyed by the storm in the community, which also wreaked havoc at the Justice Chinwuba Memorial Secondary School in the area.

President of Old Boys Association of Father Joseph Memorial High School, Aguleri, Dr. Emman Ude-Akpeh, expressed shock over the level of destruction of facilities in the school.

He praised the governor for his prompt response in visiting the school to ascertain the level of damage.

He was confident in the synergy of the government and other stakeholders, including the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and the Federal Government to restore normality to the lives of the over 2000 affected pupils.

He said: “For the governor to visit the school with the Commissioners for Works and that of Housing is a clear indication that he is always ready to listen to the yearnings of the people.

“He gave immediate instructions on the spot as to what is to be done. We know that he will do what he said and will wipe away our tears before long.

“On behalf of the entire Old Boys Association, the PTA and the school authorities, we thank him immensely and pray the Almighty God will continue to empower him to continue the great works he has been doing for Ndi Anambra.”

Ude-Akpeh also thanked the Federal Government for sending NEMA alongside SEMA for on-the- spot assessment of level of destruction in the school and other schools and residential buildings affected in the area.

The governor  was received by the Bishop of Onitsha Archdiocese, Most Revd. Denis Isizoh; Principal of the school, Revd. Fr. Anthony Izuchukwu, among others.

 

By Justina Asishana, Minna

A Neuro-Scientist, Dr. Angela Danborno, has presented brain models to secondary schools in Nasarawa State to enable the schools to teach students about the brain, its functions and how to take care of it.

Danborno, a lecturer in the Department of Physiology at Bingham University, Karu, Nasarawa, made the presentation during a Global Engagement Outreach, Teach the Teachers Programme sponsored by the International Brain Research Organisation (IBRO).

She said the brain models would encourage students to develop an interest in studying neuro-science as neuro-scientists are very few in the country, adding that more people needed to come into the profession to promote the mental health of the people.

Speaking to the selected teachers of 17 schools drawn from across the state, Danborno stressed the  importance of the brain.

She appealed to the teachers not to just put the brain model in the science laboratory, but use it to teach students to encourage them to take up the study of the brain.

Danborno who had earlier engaged the people of Karu community on building better mental health, lamented that the level of brain awareness in communities was low and needed to be improved.

She explained that most families and communities did not know anything about the brain and this made them take a lot of self-diagnosis which could lead to brain  damage.

“The programme is to bring to the awareness that the brain is very important and the brain is you because everything about the human body is controlled by the brain,”  she said.

The programme, which  was sponsored by the IBRO, enlightened teachers  on the general introduction of neuroscience, the different parts of the brain and their general functions and exhibition of the different parts of the brain.

Speaking to The Nation after the programme, Favour Iyen of Brainfield College noted that she learnt a lot about the brain and its functions, adding that the programme was enlightening and educative.

Louis Aderomose of St. Philips Academy, Maraba, said she learnt of the dangers of drugs to the brain and how to counsel students who may be going through problems of mental health.

After three years of revamping the first six years of basic education in Edo State, through the introduction of the Edo Basic Education Sector Transformation (BEST) project, the Edo State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) is planning to extend the initiative to junior secondary schools. KOFOWOROLA BELO-OSAGIE reports on the changes it brought to teaching and learning.

The Edo State Basic Education Board (SUBEB) has announced  plans to extend the Edo Basic Education Sector Transformation (Edo BEST) to government-owned junior secondary schools.

This follows three years of implementation of the technology-based initiative which provides teachers with standardised lesson notes programmed into tablets, and pedagogical and classroom management skills, to enhance learning outcomes in 870 of 1,056 public primary schools in Edo State.

In an interview on the sidelines of activities to mark the third anniversary of Edo BEST, the SUBEB Chairman, Dr. Joan Osa Oviawe, said the decision to extend the initiative to secondary schools was informed by its success at the primary school level.

Before Edo BEST, she said, little was happening in public schools in terms of teaching, learning and co-curricula activities. She said there was high rate of absenteeism, dereliction of duties and lopsided deployment of teachers in favour of the urban centres.

She said: “In an environment where accountability and transparency were not the typical norm, trying to introduce those two important attributes into any system,you are bound to face resistance and backlash. For instance, when we came in, the distribution of teachers across the 18 local government areas was very lopsided. We had the bulk of our teachers in the urban centres. We had up to 40 excess teachers in one school. So they will just create arms of classes and, in each class, they don’t have more than 10 to 15 pupils. There was a massive waste of resources.

“Another thing we encountered when we came in, was the practice of having multiple schools in one compound, so a compound will have four different schools and four different sets of uniforms and teachers and four sets of administrations and so in trying to do a more wholistic transfer of teachers, we discovered that in pushing the teachers to semi-urban areas, there was still resistance.

“Another challenge that we faced was their general attitude to work and there was a certain kind of deception that it was the remnant that attended public school, so therefore, their learning was expendable. So you found that any teacher could just take off for weeks without going to school and still collect their salaries.”

Though Edo BEST started as a pilot in a few schools, Oviawe said scaling up to cover most schools happened early because the situation was so bad.

She said the baseline assessment revealed that many pupils could not read – with some in Primary Four at pre-primary reading levels.

Oviawe said: “Before Edo BEST was launched in April 2018, between February and March 2018, we carried out what we called pupils’ diagnostics to be able to determine where our pupils were in terms of learning. In 2017 between October and November, we also did a school census across the state to determine the number of pupils and teachers we had in our system because it was the intention of Governor Obaseki that if we don’t know the number of pupils and teachers we won’t be able to plan well . Through that initial census, we were able to discover quite a number of anormalies that we needed to rectify to ensure that a reform programme would begin on a strong note. From the pupils diagnostics we carried out across the three senatorial districts in both urban and rural schools, we discovered that on the average our pupils were behind. In some cases there were pupils in Primary Three and  Primary Four below the level of Primary One.”

To remedy the situation, the SUBEB chair said Edo BEST introduced a cross grade reading programme that grouped the pupils according to their reading abilities rather than their grades, and learning took off from there.

The evidence of improvement was tested as part of the activities commemorating the Edo BEST anniversary through a reading and fluency competition involving pupils from rural and urban schools across the state.

The winner of the competition was 10-year- old Florence Patrick, a pupil of Owina Primary School, Idunmwowina in Ovia North East Local Government Area of Edo State, a rural school.

The Primary Five pupil achieved the highest speed and fluency of 189 words per minute – a feat Oviawe said was worth celebrating as she noted that children from developed countries achieve an average of 180 words per minute.

Florence’s teacher, Mrs. Roseline Eke-Ebiyo, told The Nation in an interview, that the pupil who joined her school two years ago from a private school had improved tremendously.

She said the introduction of the Edo BEST had led to general improvement in learning outcomes of public school children and boosted their confidence in relating with their private school counterparts.

“It is just like telling someone that black can become white and he begins to imagine how possible it is. And gradually flashes of white begin to show. That is the innovation that Edo BEST achieved. In those days, public school children could not express themselves. But now, our children have learnt a lot in English and Mathematics. That shyness has been eradicated due to what Edo BEST has taught them. I am giving 90 per cent from what we had before. The difference is clear,” she said.

Mrs. Eke-Ebiyo said the introduction of Edo BEST led to the depletion of the population of three private schools in her community.

“Those of them that came from private schools saw the difference. The girl that won the award came from a private school two years ago; she said there was a difference. A lot of things she did not know when she was in private school, she clearly understands now.”

For teachers, Mrs. Eke-Ebiyo said Edo BEST transformed them from analog to digital teachers.

“It moved us from analog to digital. Now we don’t write lesson notes. The pattern of teaching is quite different; there is a close monitoring of pupils in class now.

She, however, appealed to Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, to expand the classroom facilities as the school had become over-populated – having over 100 pupils in classes that once had 55.

“The school needs at least a block of six classrooms. I know at least three private schools that do not have population because of Edo BEST. The governor should please provide more facilities,” she said.

Chairman School Based Management Committee, Adesuwa Primary School, GRA, Benin, Mr. Albert Iyamu said Edo BEST had restored parents’ confidence in public schools.

“Edo BEST impacted greatly on schools.  Parents who hitherto could not afford good education for their children could now attend good government schools wehre the right norms are in place.  The teachers, pupils, they do what is right as per teaching and learning.

“Before this time public schools were seen as places where you go to do things that are not necessarily right.  Private schools were what are in place.  But now because of Edo BEST, people now take their children from private schools to public schools and the desired results, they get,” he said.

As the government addresses the need to expand infrastructure in its schools because of Edo BEST, it still has186 primary schools yet to begin implementation of the initiative.

When asked how SUBEB was addressing the lacuna, Dr. Oviawe said the board sent Quality Assurance officers to schools regularly, who ensure there is no dereliction of duty. She assured that the remaining schools would join soon.

On the extension of Edo BEST to secondary schools, Oviawe said Obaseki had approved the extension, which would start with the JSS1 classes in the state’s 305 secondary schools.

She said the secondary school teachers would be trained like their primary school counterparts who now use standardised lesson notes programmed in tablets to teach.

Oviawe, who has a doctorate degree in Primary and Secondary Education reforms, said many of the 3,000 teachers the state newly hired to resume in May, would be posted to fill in the gaps in the schools.