The Director, Public Affairs, Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, Mr. Kayode Sutton, has explained why the ministry is insisting on merit in promotion of pupils.
In an interview with The Nation on the issue, Sutton called for scrutinisation of the causes and perpetrators of mass promotion of pupils.
Sutton’s explanation came after the Lagos State Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Mr. Jamie Alli-Balogun, said the era of mass promotion of students in the state has ended.
Alli-Balogun, who spoke on Monday while monitoring school resumption in the state, warned that teachers caught extorting money from students to award marks to them will be dismissed.
He told principals, vice-principals and teachers that students not qualified for the next class must repeat.
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But, Sutton noted that most schools reprimand teachers for the students’ performance. This, he alleged, pushes some teachers into promoting some students, who do not meet up with academic expectations.
He emphasised that efforts should be on preparing the students for the external examination, not on aiding them to scale through in internal examination. He added that external examination should be the right yardstick to judge students’ performance.
“We have to look inward to why we are not really doing well when it comes to external examination like WASSCE and others. We need to look inward to what are some of the causes. One of such causes is that every child wants to be in Senior Secondary 3 (SS3).
“Teachers are now being reprimanded for students’ performance. If a child does not have the prerequisite passes or marks to get promoted, they’re sometimes promoting them. It’s not enough to have thousands of them in SS3 and when they go for external examination, we don’t have a commiserate performance.
We want the best in SS3, so that when they go for external examination, they would perform well. Parents should be informed that this is a win-win thing for the parents, the school and everybody. If your child didn’t do well in SS1 or SS2, there’s no point promoting him to SS3.
“We need to take precaution and put some things right. We don’t need so many of them in SS3 sitting for the examination. We need to scrutinise them for the external examination. We need the best. Those who are not qualified yet should take their time to prepare themselves in order to qualify. This would help us have the best performances.
“There should be a monitoring facility to fish out teachers aiding these students to pass. We need the best performance in external examination,” he explained.
He also, stated that the state government invests a lot in the state’s education and should have excellent performance by students in return.
“Lagos State government pays the bill. It’s not good that after the investment, we end up having low performance.
“The expenditure in education by the present government as led by Governor Sanwo-Olu surpasses most states in Nigeria and we expect a commensurate performance in external examination
“We are going to look into pass promotion, especially in SS3 classes. We are going to make sure we have the best students,” he assured.