Ogun State government has reassured residents of the state that it will continue to create conducive environment for teaching and learning, so that the state will continue to occupy its place of pride in the nation’s education sector.
The State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Prof. Abayomi Arigbabu, disclosed this at a stakeholders’ meeting in Abeokuta, the state capital, where he gave the scorecard of the ministry in the last three and half years.
Arigbabu, who described Governor Dapo Abiodun as a lover of education, said, the governor has been given necessary support to the state education sector since his assumption of office in May 2019.
Reeling out the achievements of the ministry in the last three and half years, the Commissioner said, over 960 schools have been renovated across the state in while over 25,000 tables and chairs had been provided in the schools to cushion the effects of shortage of furniture in the schools across the state.
Prof. Arigbabu who argued that the immediate past administration left the state educational sector in a sorry situation, noted that the Dapo Abiodun’s-led administration has totally overhauled the sector to meet up with the 2st Century standard.
The Professor of Mathematics also declared that the state government would upgrade all the 511 secondary schools across the state into model schools under its Flagship Schools Initiative.
According to him, 42 out of the schools have been upgraded into model schools while others are waiting for upgrading.
He said “We have compiled list of all schools that need intervention and with this, we have renovated 960 schools and we have supplied over 2,5000 tables and chairs to reduce and cushion the effects of shortage of furniture in our schools. We are not done yet, more schools will still be renovated by government across the state.
We have started systematic work on the Flagship schools with the standard of candidates to be admitted into the schools, quality of teachers and also in terms of quantities and the decongestion of the population of those schools. Decongestion of class population is one of our goals in Ogun State. In our flagship schools, there is no classroom that is more than 60 pupils. We have started reducing the population of our pupils.
“We have also upgraded and recategorized our schools, this is a new initiative in Ogun state which we call the Flagship School Initiative. This initiative means that we are not starting model colleges from the scratch, but we want to turn our colleges into model colleges.
He added “Where we are going is that all the 511 secondary schools in the state will better be model colleges. Now, we have 42 of those schools, we want to solve the problem in our education sector. The 42 flagship schools are spread across the three senatorial districts of the state and to be admitted into these schools, there is usually screening test”.
While disclosing that government is working round the clock to decongest all the overcrowded schools, he said the state government would make provision to build more classrooms in some existing schools, establish schools in newly developed areas and as well take over community schools in the state to accommodate more students.
“To achieve this, we have given ourselves a six years plan and except we establish more schools and build more classrooms, we cannot achieve this goal and where we are going is to have maximum of 40 pupils in a class.”
“We have also embarked on training and retraining of teachers and head teachers. Principals of all technical schools have just returned from Germany. 11 technical school teachers were in Germany for training for one month. We are improving on the conduct Basic Education Certificate Examination through the use of personalized OMR sheet”.
He said, “the state government had increased the running cost for public primary and secondary schools in the state by over 120%. Also, for all categories of children in the state to have access to basic education, government had abolished all forms of levies and fees in all its schools”.
“Also, there is 50% increase in feeding allowance for learners,in all the state Special Needs Schools. All buildings in these schools had been rehabilitated to provide conducive for teaching and learning environment for children with special needs”.
“The state government has distributed over 1,000 wheelchairs and white cane to special needs learners across the state”.
Present at the stakeholders meeting were; the Nigerian Union Teachers (NUT) state chairman, Abiodun Akinola, The President of the Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools in the State, Akeem Lasisi, representatives of various higher institutions in the state, among others.