*Gross underfunding and insensitivity of the
government to the welfare condition of education workers are to be blamed for
the mass failure in the unified promotion examination in the state
*We demand immediate Payment of all arrears
of salary and allowance education workers in the state are being owed.
* Ajimobi-led Government must also
comply with the UNESCO recommendation that 26% of annual budgetary allocation
must be voted for education
PRESS STATEMENT
The
Education Rights Campaign (ERC) Oyo State Chapter blames gross underfunding of
public education and insensitivity to welfare condition of education workers by
successive government in the State for the mass failure recorded by hundreds of
public secondary school students in the state who took part in the last unified
promotion examination conducted by the state ministry of education. At the same
time, the ERC warns and cautions the APC-led government in the state to be
mindful of its rigid stance over its new promotion policy which stipulates
among other things that only students who score 50% in five major subjects
including English and Mathematics will transit to the next class.
To
be clear, the ERC supports and promotes academic excellence. However, it is our
believe that academic excellence is a function of not just the individual
abilities of students but also a reflection of the sum-total of the conditions
of public education, learning environment, funding, teaching infrastructures
and teachers’ welfare. We therefore demand a reversal of the new promotion
policy and an immediate review of the unified promotion examinations.
At
the same time ERC maintains that the huge scale of the mass failure reportedly
recorded in the unified examination, could not have been otherwise given the prevailing
sorry state of public education in the state and the unfriendly circumstance
under which students were compelled to write the so-called unified examination.
It is our contention that the prevailing circumstance under which students
wrote the so-called unified examination was not favorable for any positive
academic performance. Take for instance, the academic work that was to be
undertaken for 10 weeks out of the 13 weeks the third term was expected to last
was actually compressed and forced on students within a limited period of 3
weeks. This is as a result of the decision of the Senator Ajimobi-led
government to unilaterally close down all the public schools in the state for 7
weeks without seeking the consent of either the teachers or parents.
Learning
under this circumstance will not only be difficult but somehow be impossible given the fact that most public secondary
schools in the state lack of adequate
facilities for proper teaching and learning. classes are often overcrowded with
a teacher responsible for a minimum of six classes across various levels.
Proper student monitoring through assignment, tests, and other forms of
continuous assessment under this kind of situation can rarely take place. This
is as a result of the volume of scripts teachers have to contend with.
Compounding the this gory tale is the fact that workers in the education
sector, particularly teachers, are being owed over 6months arrears of salaries
and allowances by the Ajimobi-led government in the state.
In
as much we of the ERC oppose the idea of automatic promotion; it is also our
opinion that it is only where all these situations and circumstances are taken
into cognizance, that the newly formulated promotion policy can be regarded as
anything close to a valid and fair assessment of the performance of Oyo state
public secondary students. This is very important especially in a situation
whereby the administered questions in the unified examination were set by
officers in the ministries of education instead of respective subject teachers
across the schools who would have been more mindful of areas in the syllabus
they were unable to cover while preparing the questions to be administered in
the examination.
Therefore,
any promotion policy that fails to put into consideration certain factors like
poor state of public education in the state, poor welfare condition under which
education workers groan and circumstance under which students wrote the
examination is liable to be bias and a rigid stance on its implementation may
force parents, students and the general public to conclude that it`s a
deliberate ploy by the state government to witch-hunt the students particularly
for the mass protest they organized on the 6th of June, 2016 against
the plan by the state government to sell off some public secondary schools in
the state under a false, anti-people and neo-liberal policy of Public Private
partnership (PPP).
It
is on this basis we call on the state government to be mindful of its rigid
stance on the so-called promotion policy which the prevailing development
across secondary schools in the state has clearly shown to have failed to take
cognizance of the poor state of public education in the state and the
circumstance under which the examination itself was written. Should the Oyo
State Government continue to insist on the new promotion policy in spite of its
above-stated deficiency and inadequacies, we of the ERC will be left with no
other option than to conclude that the so-called policy is a deliberate ploy by
the state government to create a public hysteria in order to deepen its
hypocritical argument of poor standard of public education so as to revive its
plan to sell off some public secondary schools in the state.
The
implementation of the new promotion policy is already creating a kind of
confusion in many secondary schools across the state. For instance in
Ijokodo Grammar school, Ibadan, only four (4) students could manage to be
promoted in a class of over 87 students. The situation is not also better in
Bashorun-Ojo High school, Ibadan where only 18 students managed be promoted in
class of over 145 students. More sinister however is that this tale of failure
bears resemblance to the pattern of events that preceded the privatization and
sale of national assets like the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN),
Nigeria Airways and even the ongoing attempt to kill public refineries for
Dangote’s private refinery to thrive when it comes on-stream in few years to
come. The agenda is always to make public concerns and national assets look so
bad than they really are in order to justify their privatization to party
cronies and big business to make profit from.
Except
this new promotion policy is reversed, the ugly development in schools like
Isale-Oyo community high school and Anglican secondary schools where classroom
were set ablaze by aggrieved pupils is an indication that the new policy is
capable to triggerring a worse phase of social tension and unrest that is
currently growing among secondary school students in the state. Again, ERC
believes that no amount of military intervention can curb this growing mass
anger among students.
It
is on this basis that we condemn the militarization of schools in the state and
demand the immediate withdrawal of police and soldiers that are stationed there
in. Instead, we call on the state government to review its rigid stance on the
newly formulated promotion policy. If the Ajimobi-led Oyo state government is
truly serious about academic excellence, then the government must comply with the recommendation of UNESCO that 26% of
annual budget must be voted for public education first and foremost as a
basis to reverse the sorry state of public education in the state.
At
the same time, we call on the workers unions (NUT, ANCORPS) and associations
like PTA in education sector to immediately convene and organize a conference
of teachers, principals, parents, pupils, pro-education civil society
organizations and other stakeholders in the education sector in the state to
review the general situation in the public education including the
controversies surrounding the new promotion policy. This is with a view to
arrive at recommendations that are capable of improving the standard of public
education in the state.
Ogundele
Micheal
Oyo State Co-ordinator
07066249160
No comments:
Post a Comment