The Plateau State Government has shut down more than 100 illegal schools across 17 Local Government Areas (LGA), Mr. Jude Dakur, the commissioner for secondary education said.
Dakur said in Jos yesterday that the schools which were closed last year did not meet the standard requirements to educate children, who are the future leaders of the country.
He spoke while receiving an award on human values and education given to him by a research organisation.
”Some of the schools were not certified to operate, some had unqualified teachers and inconducive environment for learning,’’ the commissioner said.
Government, according to him, is committed to improving the standard of education in the state by enforcing strict compliance to standards of operations.
He pledged himself to the improvement of human capital in secondary schools in the state.
He commended Gov. Simon Lalong for his massive investment in the education sector through infrastructure development and procurement of science laboratory equipment for secondary schools.
Earlier, Dr Rhuefe Khaese, the Director of Research, in the organisation, said that Dakur was honoured with the award because of his supervisory role that had kept teachers on their toes and ensured positive teaching and learning outcomes.
“He ensures teachers are disciplined in the provision of services through punctuality to duties; and building their capacity to prepare them for public exams,” he said.
The Nasarawa State Government has closed down 10 private schools for operating illegally in Lafia, the state capital.
Mr Omaku Zakari, the Area Inspector, Lafia Area Inspectorate Office of the State Ministry of Education disclosed this in an interview with our reporter on Wednesday in Lafia.
According to him, the affected schools were either substandard, not registered or failed to renew their registration with the Ministry of Education.
Zakari said the schools also failed to scale through the verification carried out by the task force set up by the ministry.
He explained that the task force comprised of staff of the ministry, security agencies and officials of private schools proprietors in the state.
Zakari said that the closure was aimed at sanitising the education sector for better service delivery.
He said the verification would be a continuous exercise and any school that failed to meet up with the requirements at any point would be shut down, until such school does what is expected.
He said that though private schools were contributing to the educational development of the state, they must operate within the law.
Zakari named some of the affected schools to include; Solid Foundation, Brilliant Child Academic, Prince and Princes Private Schools among others.
He, therefore, urged the management of the schools to go to the ministry to normalise their documents so that their schools can be reopened.
Rivers State Governor, Chief Nyesom Wike, has announced plans to shut down all illegal private schools in the state.
The governor also said many principals of public secondary schools will be suspended for charging illegal levies which placed unnecessary burden on parents.
Speaking at the Government House, Port Harcourt, during a meeting with proprietors of private secondary schools, Wike said the actions of his administration were aimed at improving the quality of education in the state.
He said he would inaugurate a committee to undertake the comprehensive audit of all private schools in the state for the purposes of ascertaining the quality of teachers, their environment and operational capacity.
“This audit committee will work with stakeholders. All schools that are not approved would be shut down immediately. We cannot continue to have illegal schools in the state, ” he said.
The governor informed that henceforth no private school will have permanent approval, pointing out that all the private schools approvals will be subject to periodic reviews.
On the payment of levies, the governor said that his administration had begun the process of harmonising all rates to eliminate multiple taxation.
He directed the Education Commissioner, Prof Kaniye Ebeku, to sanction major private schools that failed to attend the meeting, adding that going forward the meeting would be held quarterly.
The governor also said that the government would continue to support private schools through the provision of basic amenities, urging them to reciprocate by reducing the fees that they charge parents
In her remarks, Dr Okechukwu Owhondah of Haruk Group of Schools praised Wike for taking steps to improve the quality of education in the state.
Dame Victoria Awuse of Butterstone Group of Schools warned against unwholesome and unethical practices by private school owners and appealed to the state government to check their excesses.
Ebeku assured that the ministry will always work towards the improvement of education in the state.
Worried by the increasing number of illegally-operated primary and secondary schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the Department of Quality Assurance (QA) FCT Education Secretariat has commenced a sensitization exercise that will lead to the eventual closure of all unregistered schools in the territory.
There are 556 such schools in Abuja, which the department has warned the public not to patronise.
Aside the poor academic quality, the Director, QA, Mr Ayuba Didam, said the schools also posed physical and psychological dangers to the children.
“No matter how bad a public school is, it is better than these private schools,” he said.
Some of the schools on the list are Raphil Nursery and Primary School in Kado, Life Camp; Destiny Nursery and Primary International School, Karmo; Fountain of Peace Nursery and Primary School; Science and Wonders Academy; Winners Secondary School and Goodness Nursery and Primary Academy; all in Tundunwada village within the Federal Housing estate, Lugbe, Abuja.
This reporter, who toured some of the schools with the QA department, observed that many of the schools were converted from churches; combined more than one class in a room; had poor toilet facilities; or were built on septic tanks.
For example, at Raphil Nursery and Primary School, about 25-30 pupils were cramped into small classrooms with a very poorly ventilated toilet in a building still under construction; Destiny Nursery and Primary International School was also housed in an uncompleted structure built partly with mud and zinc, and without toilets. Its proprietor, Mr. Ebere Sunday, said: “we are planning to build the toilet in the next two weeks”.
Mr Didam, said the schools cannot be approved and urged parents to patronise public schools.
“‘The quality of these schools is poor. There is no way you can get approval for these type of schools because the environment is not conducive. In most of the places where you find these schools, not few kilometers away, there are public schools well provided for. There are better personnel in the public schools. When you put the students to test from our experience those from public schools have always excelled,” he stated.
Proprietor of Science and Wonders Academy, Mr. Kayode Babalola, however claimed his school was not illegal.
“We are registered with Department of Policy implementation (DPI). The first form we collected was N5, 000 and the other one is N35, 000. It is a process, we have our file here. We are not operating illegally here though we have not been accredited yet. We have been working since 2010,” he said.
The Kwara State government yesterday said it has shut ten private schools for operating illegally. It added that in the last five months, it had sanctioned some teachers, including three vice principals in one of the state-owned secondary schools, for alleged indiscipline and truancy.
Commissioner for Education and Human Capital Development Alhaji Musa Yeketi spoke during a ministerial press briefing organised by the Ministry of Information and Communications.
He said the 10 schools were in Ilorin West Local Government Area alone. “The rate at which private schools are springing up is alarming and we have started closing those without approval. This morning (yesterday), our teams went out again”. He added that the move does not negate government’s desire to partner the private sector in the educational development of the state.
Alhaji Yeketi said towards improving the standard of education, his ministry is finalising arrangements for an education summit before the end of the year, saying any move towards tackling the challenges in the sector must involve parents, teachers and the government.
The summit, he said, would build on the recommendations of a previous one held by the preceding administration, noting that the ministry was ready to improve on teachers’ discipline.
“The difference between private and public schools is monitoring, and we have started that in three councils – Ilorin West, Ilorin East and Asa. Our discoveries during the period include the need for better facilities in the schools and the bad attitude of teachers.
“For example, we visited Agbeyangi secondary school twice, and on the two occasions, only 19 of the 34 teaching staffs were on ground; the three Vice Principals were not even around. Those culpable have been rightly sanctioned and with the monitoring, the teachers are on their toes.”
Yeketi hinted that plans were on to train 250 teachers in entrepreneurship in conjunction with the Kwara State University (KWASU), Malete.
Operators of unregistered schools break the law, endanger pupils’ future, do not pay tax and are proving difficult to stop, reports JIDE BABALOLA
They are located in remote settings, run by half-baked teachers and cater to an endless string of helpless pupils. That is the picture of illegal schools in Federal Capital Territory (FCT). And there are over 1,000 of them, according to figures exclusively released to The Nation.
Operators of these fake facilities claim their activities are within their rights to self-sustenance.
“It is true that the authorities have been bothering us, trying to close our schools but we have a right to sustain our only means of livelihood,” one of them who sought anonymity told The Nation.
From a negligible number when the FCT was created, they have grown like a malignant cancer, giving Education Secretariat’s Department of Quality Assurance a headache.
The Director of Quality Assurance, Mr. Ayuba Dudam said almost all such schools being operated in shanty areas have sub-standard teachers, including some found to be unable to spell ‘kettle’ and other simple English Language words.
•Mr Dudam
“They are so many,” Dudam said. “That is our headache in the FCT. The reason is this – so many people have the erroneous belief that the easiest business to run is a school. This is wrong because running a school is a highly technical and expensive undertaking. The regulations and standards required are very high and you must provide all necessary requirements.
“But because Abuja is such a cosmopolitan environment with people coming from all over the country into the city and its surrounding areas every day, so many want to quickly get into some business and several easily drift into having a school as a business. They believe that you can just start a school in your backyard or garage; some even start from their sitting rooms and they call it a school.
“When you go to them, especially in those remote areas far from the city, and you declare that they are sealed, they go away. But by the next day or a few weeks thereafter, they are back in business,” he said.
Altogether, there are 456 duly-registered and accredited basic and senior schools in the FCT. A basic school has nursery, primary and junior secondary components. The ones with secondary classes 1, 2 and 3 are senior secondary schools.
Just recently, the DQA brought in education experts for the assessment and accreditation of schools. The Accreditation Exercise precedes recommendation of schools for ministerial approval.
The Department of Quality Assurance has a statutory mandate of inspecting, evaluating and monitoring of all schools in the Federal Capital Territory, irrespective of whether they are basic schools or secondary schools, public or private schools. It also registers and accredit such schools, using an explicitly spelt out Guidelines which prospective school proprietors procure for N5, 000, along with the ‘Minimum Standards’ list which outlines the minimum standard for the establishment of schools anywhere in Nigeria
Part of what makes it difficult for some prospective schools to scale through the latest Accreditation Exercise is the high calibre of educationists involved in the screening process. There were three university professors and highly-experienced officials from the National Universities Commission, National Council for Colleges of Educations and other government education agencies. Their strict assessment covers the adequacy of infrastructures, quality of staffing, the standard of the curriculum and arrangements for extra-curricular and co-curricular activities.
According to Dudam: “We also assess the affective domains. The relationship of that school to the immediate community and other factors are also considered before recommendations are made. Each of these areas must be scored and a school must pass up to a certain standard, in order to qualify to be granted accreditation. You may get 70 percent in the area of having buildings, workshops and so on but if you get only 30 percent in the area of staffing, you have failed,” he explained.
It is exactly these set of hurdles that the owners of several unaccredited schools see as being more of pre-determined obstacles that prevent them from transiting into being ‘legal’ schools.
“The cost of land procurement, construction and payment for the kind of teachers they insist upon is difficult to meet,” a female ‘proprietor’ of one of the FCT’s unaccredited schools said while emphasising that economic challenges, prevailing poverty in the outskirts of Abuja and other challenges necessitate that their business should be allowed to continue.
Mr. Ayuba Dudam argued that the DQA cannot make such compromise.
“It is not just a matter of ‘garbage in, garbage out’ due to the reluctance of such schools to follow standard curriculum; it is just like having quack hospitals and it is deadly.
“Firstly, the right types of infrastructure are not there; the right kind of staff is never there, and; the curriculum is not correct. So, whatever they are doing there is wrong because over time, it is more like destruction instead of construction. Children ought to be taught but instead, they are being cheated,” he said.
Dire as the long-term effect of such schools are, to children’s long-term intellectual development, the FCT Education secretariat’s Department of Quality Assurance is handicapped by two major impediments. While it has a high number of well-qualified staff for the inspection of schools, it barely has vehicles to visit outlying areas outside the city. The rugged rural terrains farther from Abuja appear to be safe havens for operators of fake schools who charge daily or weekly payments to ‘teach’ children of poor parents who are mostly far from being literate enough to realize the difference between right and wrong-headed education.
Also, the DQA lacks adequately effective legal muscle to back its regulatory mandate. Hence, illegal schools that have been closed several times keep coming back. It is no big surprise that whenever the authorities close the shanty schools, their defiant owners agree for a while, only to continue shortly afterwards, knowing that the department supervising them has to take its attention elsewhere, even while contending with severe logistic impediments that include very scanty financial allocations and lack of vehicles needed for inspection tours.
But Dudam who emphasised that officials of DQA in all the department’s seven zonal offices are quietly monitoring operators of hundreds of shanty schools, says all that is now about to change this month as innovative enforcement measures are about to begin. He says that shortage of resources and the need to stop the garbage ‘education’ being fed to children in the outskirts of Abuja city now necessitate measures that include pulling down structures being used for such illegal and sub-standard ‘teaching’
“Having looked left and right and found no way out and not wanting to be a toothless bulldog, we therefore decided that we should do more with the School Closures Committee that was approved by the immediate past minister of the FCT. It comprises all stakeholders/agencies in education in the FCT, the legal department, police, Development Control Department and others are involved.
“So, we decided to look inwards towards finding a lasting solution to this problem by using the Development Control department’s authority. The Department of Development Control is the organ of the FCT Administration that is saddled with the responsibility of monitoring and ensuring compliance with all development guidelines, largely, the Abuja Master Plan and the FCT Regional Development Plan as conceived by the founding fathers before 1979.
“They are part of our Schools Closure Committee and they have authority for effective enforcement of development control (including demolition of all illegal structures
The Ebonyi State government has shut seven illegal private schools operating in the state.
The affected schools, five nursery and primary schools, and two secondary schools are located in various parts of Abakaliki, the state capital.
Commissioner for Education, Mr Ndubuisi Chibueze-Agbo, who announced the closure to reporters in Abakaliki, said the affected schools were functioning without the approval of the state Ministry of Education.
He said the schools lacked necessary learning facilities such as libraries, science laboratories, recreational facilities and functional administrative block as prescribed by extant laws guiding the establishment of schools.
He frowned at the poor and dehumanising environment some of the affected schools operated, describing it as unacceptable.
“The state committee on closure of illegal and substandard schools took an assessment tour to some private schools operating in the state. The committee was horrified at the discovery it made.
“In some of the affected schools our children are been packed like sardines in very horrifying and squalid conditions. We discovered also that these schools lacked adequate accommodations to cater for their intakes as classroom contains no fewer than 60 pupils,” he said.
Chibueze-Agbo added that all the teachers in the affected schools did not possess the requisite teaching qualification.
“The National Council on Education has made National Certificate in Education (NCE) the least teaching qualification in the country. What we are saying is that for you to run a private school in this state you must provide the minimum standard requirement in terms of facilities and personnel. Half-baked teachers will as a matter of fact , produce half baked students who will in turn perpetuate examination malpractice and we say no to this. None of our public schools teachers teaches with less than NCE and we want the same scenario in our private schools,” he added.
The commissioner reiterated government’s determination to bequeath sound education legacy to the people. He vowed that no stone would be left on turned to actualise the dream. He said the state would henceforth punish perpetrators of the evil act.
“It is a criminal offence to operate a school without obtaining all necessary approval papers from government and henceforth offenders will be made to face criminal prosecution in law courts,” he said.
He called on parents, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Civil Society Groups and other stakeholders in education to partner with the government to end activities of illegal school operators.
He also advised parents and guardians to take advantage of free and compulsory basic education in the state to avail their children and wards of functional and qualitative education.
The Akwa Ibom government on Thursday in Uyo warned that it would shut all illegal schools in the state.
At a media forum, the Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Eunice Thomas, said the ministry would commence visitations to schools to authenticate their certificates of registration.
“Any school that did not meet government’s approved standard will be closed down,’’ she warned.
Thomas said the government had received a consignment of books worth N16.2 million for its free and compulsory education programme.
She said it was illegal for some private schools, which had approval to operate nursery classes to extend their programmes to cover to primary and secondary schools.
“The state government has observed that while some proprietors of these private schools operate without certificates of registration, some had failed to update their documents to cover the additional schools,’’ the News Agency of Nigeria quoted the commissioner as saying at the forum.
Thomas said that many of the operators did not have the facilities to accommodate the expansion they carried out.
The commissioner said several meetings were held with stakeholders in an effort to make the system functional for the 1.7 million pupils and students in the state.
She stated that government’s aim was to provide a sustained education system for the state.
