Govt pledges improved education quality at unity schools

The Federal Government has affirmed its commitment to ensuring continuous quality education at all federal government colleges in the country.

This is coming as parents and guardians of students of some of the schools also known as unity colleges, are up in arms against authorities of four such institutions over the apparent rot in the schools, which they want the government to halt.

Speaking at the 2015 speech/prize-giving and graduation ceremony of King’s College, Lagos, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Dr. MacJohn Nwaobiala, recalled that some of the colleges especially in the north eastern zone have been confronted with challenges including Boko Haram insurgency, which has resulted to loss of lives/properties and disruption of academic activities.

He said, “In a bid to ensure uninterrupted education for our children, the Federal Government in collaboration with the United Nations’ Special Envoy for Global Education, Mr. Gordon Brown and a coalition of Nigeria business leaders, introduced the “Safe Schools Initiative, an initiative meant to provide a pragmatic response to the protection of schools and prevention of future attacks in schools across the country.

“Through this intervention, government is also reconstructing the infrastructure of schools destroyed as well as protecting the children. In an effort to achieve a more conducive learning environment in the unity colleges, government has continued to provide educational facilities, which include the recently constructed e-library across the colleges. This is in addition to the laboratories provided through the World Bank STEP-B projects.”

He said government on its part would continue to provide the basics that would improve learning outcome in unity schools, including regular training and retraining of teachers, as well as recruitment of new teaching staff to address the shortfall.

Principal of the school, Mr. Dele Olapeju, appealed to the Federal Government to design a special allocation and funding plan for the development of the foremost educational institution in Nigeria.

“The overhead allocation to the college is N2m monthly. This is what is used to run all the generators, fund the cars and buses, carry out maintenance of the facilities, pay teachers allowances, train staff and students and carry out other corporate responsibilities.

“The boarding fee is N8, 000 per student, the college bill for food monthly is N13m while the meal subsidy is N10m monthly. Owing to the age and population, the percentage of non-teaching staff offering support services to the college under the Federal Government payroll is 15 per cent. Most of the cooks, drivers, wardens, gardeners, and security men are all borne outside government funds.

He continued, “The monthly wage bill incurred for the 52 temporary teachers and 100 support staff is N3.3m with a subsidy of N640, 000 by the PTA.