Borno State will, this year, commence afternoon primary and secondary education system to address problems of congestion and increase enrollment of out-of-school children.
The state governor, Babagana Zulum, announced this on Monday in Maiduguri during his inauguration speech after taking an oath of office for second term.
“Although we have built dozens of new Mega-Size schools and expanded existing schools with about 1000 new classrooms, we are still faced with issues of congestion in classrooms, and with the worse problem of having thousands of out-of-school children despite being of school-ages,” Zulum said.
Consequently, he added, “I am happy to announce that Borno State will soon commence afternoon primary and secondary schools system. I am appointing an implementation committee to work out modalities for starting the afternoon school system, and it (the committee) will be identifying pilot schools to be selected from some of our mega schools in Maiduguri which have good lightening systems.”
Zulum explained that introducing afternoon schools would entail increased number of staff and for that, he directed the Office of the Head of Service to carefully identify some well-certificated staff currently redundant at government secretariats, who would be trained on school orientation and could be deployed to hold non-teaching positions in afternoon schools.
The governor also said security measures would be taken to ensure success of of the afternoon schools, noting that classes might sometimes extend to early portions of the night.
As part of measures to improve the standard of education in Borno State, Governor Zulum also announced a plan to recruit 5,000 teachers during his second term of office.
Zulum said other measures such as mock examinations in secondary schools would be re-introduced and centers of excellence would be established to allow government to harness the potentials of less privileged children.
