My administration’s greatest impact is on education, says Aregbesola

Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola has said his administration’s greatest impact is on education, with the construction of over 170 new schools, comprising 21 elementary schools with 531 classrooms; 30 middle schools with 570 classroom blocks; and Senior Secondary blocks of 792 classrooms.

The governor, who said this while delivering a paper titled: “Wringing Water From Stone,” at the Department of Economics, University of Lagos, explained that it is also pursuing rehabilitation of old schools, and that the administration is conscious of the fact that learning environment must be conducive for good learning.

He said: “Our tropical environment is harsh, so we provided air conditioners in our classrooms and teachers look like corporate workers. We provided 50,000 learning tablets “Opon-imo” for final year students.

When teachers went on strike sometime last year, the learning tablets came handy to complement students preparing for West African School Certificate (WASC) examination. More than 300,000 students have benefitted from the scheme.

“The world is advancing at a phenomenal speed and only those that are digital can survive in this new age. We established Osun Education Quality Assurance Agency to oversee the quality of content dished out to our students in line with our overall vision to develop the new man intellectually, socially, and morally.”

Aregbesola said Osun is one of the few states that pioneered free school feeding programme, where healthy and nutritional meals are served to about 250,000 pupils every school day.

“On road construction and rehabilitation, we established the Urban Renewal Committee, which rolled out urban renewal plan that selected nine cities for massive development from June 11, 2011. These are Ilesa, Oshogbo, Ile-Ife, Iwo, Ikire, and Ejigbo, aimed at creating sustainable environment.”