Cognitive activities not enough, NAPPS tells private schools

By Kofoworola Belo-Osagie

Schools that focus on academics may not be getting the best out of their pupils, the National President, National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS), Chief Yomi Otubela, has said.

He advised that schools should infuse extra-curricular activities into their academic programme every term.

Speaking during the maiden national debate competition organised by NAPPS in Lagos, Otubela said cognitive education should be balanced with the affective and psychomotor domains of learning.

“Education is not all about the cognitive domain of the education, we also talk about the psychomotor and their affective and it is from that angle that we are beginning to see that we are not doing as much as is expected of us as teachers and as schools in the area of tapping into the talents of the children through the co-curricular activities,” he said.

Otubela said the desire to boost extra-curricular activities informed the debate competition which he said would be done annually to commemorate the children’s day yearly.

He said this year’s contest only featured participants from five per cent of NAPPS 40,000 schools and hoped that there would up to 20 percent next year.

Chairman of the Children’s Day programme, Dr Adetunji AbdulRahman, said the debate focused on the COVID-19 pandemic given its impact on schools and the pupils who had to be out of school for about one year.

“It was a traumatic experience for Nigerian children under our care in private schools.

And based on this, we decided to sensitise them by picking a topic around COVID-19 and impromptu speech in order to remind them of the experience and to prepare them for future endeavours,” he said.

At the end of the contest, which featured 12 schools in the finale, the team from Lagos comprising Toluwalope Okunade of Blue Ribbon School, Agege, and Oladipupo Dabiri of Lagooz Montessori School, won the first prize of N100,000 in the primary category with 33 points. Lagos beat the duo of Adetunji Alalau and Busari Taiwo from Kwara State (which scored 30 points) to win the trophy.

In the secondary school category, the team from Oyo State won with 129 points against the team from Kogi State which garnered 111 points.

Eight-year-old Oladipupo said it was difficult debating against COVID-19 being real as he had learnt from school that the pandemic was real.  However, he said it was a rewarding experience.