LAGOS EDUCATION SUMMIT:WE RESPECT MRS EZEKWESILI BUT ALWAYS WONDER WHERE EDUCATIONAL STATS USED BY PUBLIC OFFICIALS COME FROM...AND WHY WAS NO MEANINGFUL REFERENCE MADE TO MASS CHEATING IN JAMB AND PRESENT PREDICAMENT OF STUDENTS?

56 Million Nigerians Illiterate –Ezekwesili  

[caption id="attachment_9006" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Oby-Ezekwesil[/caption]

Former Minister of Education, Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili says report has revealed that 56 million Nigerians are still illiterate and cannot read and write.

She spoke at the 3rd Lagos State Education Summit at the Eko Hotels and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, southwest Nigeria on Tuesday. The summit has the theme: Qualitative Education in Lagos State: Raising the Standard.

According to Ezekwesili, Nigeria “accounts for 6 million out of 36 million school girls that cannot attend primary education worldwide. There are about 56 million illiterates in Nigeria. Primary school completion rate ranges between two percent to 92 percent depending on the state.”

She said the issue of bureaucracy was a major hindrance to raising the standard of education in the country, while lamenting the overwhelming power of the education minister with respect to decision-making at the unity schools, which she said, was the practice before her appointment.

Ezekwesili explained how she found out that 96 percent of the capital expenditure appropriated for the unity schools in the federation went into the construction of fences and toilets, among others and called for intensive, increased and meaningful efforts at developing public schools, showing data that more than 65 percent of Nigerians still depended on publicly funded secondary education while about 75 percent depended on publicly funded primary education.

She said when she became a minister, enrolment “was low; quality of education below standard; schools were not well-managed; and it displayed wide inequity in terms of gender enrolment, though differed across the states.”

Delivering his address on the occasion, Governor Babatunde Fashola explained that the government had not taken any decision on whether pupils would wear Hijab or not, adding that the emphasis was on what the children know and not what they wear.

According to him, government was mindful of the inequality in the society and thought also that  continuous investment in education would help to bridge those inequalities, adding that the results from public examinations from 2007 showed that education was heading in the right direction in the state, and that if it was a quick fix, it would have its many political appeals.

“It is not a quick fix. I understand that it is a very long journey. It yet may be many years long after we have left that we will see the result but it is a journey that I am convinced that we should undertake,” he said.

“Today, one of the outcomes of our investment is that a poll conducted among 5,000 disaggregated citizens in our state recently showed that 51 percent of the citizens would put their children in public primary schools. This was not the case a few years ago. It also now shows that 60 percent of the citizens will put their children in public secondary schools and the reason is not far-fetched.

“What are we doing to improve further on those outcomes? It is the training of our teachers. In the last three years, they have spent a larger part of their long vacation in training at our Staff Development Centre in Magodo,” he explained.

Fashola also spoke on the policy shift that now placed emphasis on real success in examinations to earn promotion to the next class, saying that “we are already planning this year’s training immediately they finish the exams but perhaps to underscore what our teachers have done; over the years, our children went through school from primary through secondary school moving from one class to the other with a grade of 30 percent. So the only time they ever have to score 50 percent is when they are doing the external WAEC.”

Deputy British High Commissioner in Nigeria, Mr. Peter Carter said Britain is personally committed to the success of the Summit as it believes that education improves the quality of living of people.

He noted that the United Kingdom had continued to play roles such as facilitating inclusion of Lagos as one of the six states that is benefitting from education support programme from the Department for International Funds and Development, DFID.

Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Olayinka Oladunjoye said the State Government had been using the Lagos Education Summit to generate new ideas to take the education sector to new heights.

—Kazeem Ugbodaga

 

MANDARIN IN LAGOS STATE SCHOOLS (2)...KNOCK,KNOCK,KNOCK!...IS ANYONE LISTENING?

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SAME NOVEMBER 2012, WE MADE THESE COMMENTS ON OUR SISTER BLOG AND ON VANGUARD ONLINE...IS ANYONE LISTENING?

guv-fashola-of-lagos-state

HERE IS OUR OPINION:

Let's congratulate our hard-working  governor on many of his progressive policies and methods…no one surely will disagree with the ideas and needs leading to what might become a goal or an objective of his government…but there are many questions needing answers before we move any further on this proposal…these include…

1.Can Lagos State on its own include any subject on its secondary school curriculum without appropriate research work by the NIGERIAN EDUCATION RESEARCH COUNCIL (NERC) and approval by the Federal Council on Education through the Federal Ministry of Education? For instance can Lagos State set up an airport without approval by the Federal Ministry of Aviation? Should we not have some measure of order or of coordination in matters such as this?….

2. Who is going to teach the subject? Who is going to train the potential trainers? Where will they be trained and at what cost to the state? Has  our governor  ensured that this proposal is not one of the hundreds of money-making schemes that usually get to his table through interested cabinet members?

3. Has the Lagos State Ministry of Education submitted the reasons for the dearth of Yoruba,Igbo and Hausa teachers in its schools and why the failure rate is so high?

4. No matter how prosperous the Chinese become will English ever become a second-class language on the world  stage without a physical conquest of the Western world? That is without an Armagedon?

5. What is so special about Chinese that did not make us put Japanese in our curriculum? At least their economy is still rated higher than that of the Chinese.And if India  or Brazil which are also surging forward become as significant tomorrow will our children also have  their languages in their curriculum?



…busy at chinese…huh?

“…even English Language has not yet been mastered by our students…pidgin is pulling at them,they hardly can speak local languages to their grandmothers and they take french as a joke…now add Chinese on top to see the bundles of confusion we want to create…i think they should restrict mandarin studies to universities as was done for Russian,German,Spanish and Portugese studies…governor Fashola’s ideas are forward looking but its better to set up a department of Mandarin Studies at LASU and encourage those interested with scholarships…but before doing this they should have 2 or three Chinese brought there through bilateral agreement  with the government of China that will cost Lagos State nothing…note that China is desperately expanding its influence in Africa and Lagos is definitely a prime target…these people should map out the syllabus and training schedules starting first with 2yr diploma courses and eventually move on to B.A….if i was the Commissioner of Education for Lagos State  that will be my suggestion to our Governor." Fall out.

INTRODUCTION OF CHINESE TO LAGOS STATE SCHOOLS AND ALL THAT JAZZ (1)...ANY MORE NEWS?

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IN NOVEMBER 2012 VANGUARD NEWSPAPERS REPORTED AS FOLLOWS

GOV FASHOLA OF LAGOS STATE

Fashola defends planned introduction of Chinese in Lagos schools

FIRST REPORT VANGUARD NEWSPAPERS

Ikeja –  Lagos State Governor,  Mr Babatunde Fashola, said on Sunday that the plan by the state government to introduce Mandarin in public schools was not  to discourage the teaching of indigenous languages.

The governor said during the commemoration of 2,000 days of his administration in Ikeja that the introduction of Mandarin in schools was to give  pupils functional education in consonance with current realities.

He said the emergence of China as a major economic power should compel any serious government to begin to plan for the future.

Fashola, however, said that  no child would be compelled to take the language in school.

The Commissioner for Education, Mrs Olayinka Oladunjoye, recently announced plans by the government to introduce Chinese language in all public schools.

“Our plan to introduce Chinese in schools is not to discourage or stop the teaching of indigenous languages in schools.

“We will continue to teach Yoruba and other languages but we are saying that giving our pupils the opportunity to learn Chinese will be an advantage in a changing world.

“Whether we admit it or not the Chinese are taking over the global economy and we are only preparing our pupils for the opportunities that the use of Chinese language as the possible language of the future  might provide,“ Fashola said.

He said the various interventions  by the state government in the education sector had made positive impacts on the standard of education in the state.

The governor said the state was now ranked among the  states with the best public education in country, while the pass rate in WAEC had  moved from less than 20 per cent in 2011 to over 38.28 per cent in 2012.

SECOND REPORT VANGUARD NEWSPAPERS

LAGOS — Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State, yesterday, justified the proposed introduction of Chinese language in public schools, saying one of the advantages is  aimed at boosting the state economy.

The governor who made the disclosure during the commemoration of his 2000 Days in office in Ikeja believed the state government needed to move fast in line with the global challenge and more important, China is an economic world power.

He said: “The Chinese are in our homes more than we care to admit. China has become our largest economic partner.”

Fashola recalled an instance where there was a need to have an interpreter while a contractual agreement was to be signed between the state government and a Chinese contractor, adding that it was a Chinese who understood English that came to their rescue.

Fashola explained that as the world economy is tilting in favor of China, the trend might eventually affect the English. ‘’Don’t be surprised English may go if the global power moves to Asia.”