Infrastructural devt, key to improvement of basic education – ANCOPPS

The President, All Nigeria Confederation of Principals of Secondary Schools, Hajia Rakiya Suleiman, has said that only infrastructural development can revolutionise and improve the nation’s education sector.
Suleiman said this at the end of the just-concluded 2017 Presidential Convergence Education Summit, held in Abuja last week, on the challenges of the education sector and how to revamp it.
The ANCOPPS president noted that since basic education was the education given to pupils within the ages of six to 14 years, it was necessary to educate them, adding that government had a big role to play in enhancing the quality of education in schools.
She said that it was the responsibility of the government to provide an enabling environment for teachers and learners, including good classrooms in a quiet and serene environment that would accommodate students.
Suleiman added that once the necessary facilities had been put in place, both students and teachers would be in the right frame of mind, thereby achieving common desired goals in the classroom.
She said, “The Federal Government should provide competent teachers to facilitate the teaching and learning in a more effective manner. Adequate teachers should be employed at least to the ratio of 30 pupils to a teacher.
“In addition, government should provide rural infrastructure and amenities that can facilitate learning, such as good roads to schools, teaching and learning materials, including registers, diaries, notebooks, furniture. There should be good access to potable water and functional electricity, laboratory equipment, such as test tubes, cylinders, microscopes and other essential materials.”
She noted that with the technology age, pupils needed enlightenment, which could improve their performances, stressing that there should be provision of capital for the day-to-day running of affairs of the education
system.
This, she said, should be given priority by government because the head teacher might need petty cash to purchase stationery, pay for transportation, medical bills and other necessary facilities for running the
schools.
The ANCOPPS president added that teachers on the field should improve themselves with the help of the government.
“Workshops, seminars and other types of training should be encouraged. The bulk of the responsibility lies with government.
It should ensure the improvement of the standard of education at this level in order for it to, at least, measure up to modern
standards in other climes,”