A pragmatic proposal to return
privately-established schools to their original owners is generating
commotion in Oyo State. In the forefront of the resistance to Governor
Abiola Ajimobi’s policy are the organised labour, teachers and secondary
school pupils. While labour disrupted a roundtable for stakeholders
convened by the government, some pupils went on the rampage in Ibadan,
the state capital, violently expressing their antagonism. But the plan
is a sensible course of action. We urge Ajimobi to implement it in a
well-defined structure.
According to the governor, the
plan is necessitated by the state of the economy. It is also to atone
for the forceful take-over of private schools by the Federal Military
Government in the 1970s. Oyo State has 631 public secondary schools, out
of which it plans to return 31 to their original owners with a “proven
commitment to education advancement,” says Ajimobi. The private schools
are just a fraction of the whole as there are still 600 public schools, a
significant majority, under the management of the government. Ajimobi
argues, “We’re not selling the schools. It’s a misconception. We only
want to partner the people on the management of some of our schools,
because it has become inevitable, judging by the poor state of our
economy and the deteriorating condition of our schools.”
The other pertinent issue to be
considered is that some states in the country have returned mission and
private schools to their owners. In the first place, the schools were
seized from their founders. It was a wrong-headed action that needs to
be corrected. Apart from the proposed return ending decades of
injustice, the policy has reduced the financial burden on state
governments that have done so. Imo, Anambra, Lagos, Ogun, Delta and
Plateau states have returned schools established by private
entrepreneurs to them since the return of democracy in 1999.
Although there was a limited
opposition, Lagos implemented the initiative in 2001. But the Anambra
model, started by former governor, Peter Obi, is worth considering.
Linking the forceful takeover of schools to the collapse of education in
the state, Obi returned 1,040 primary schools to their owners in 2011.
In a well-thought-out scheme, Obi, over a period of 15 months,
reimbursed the owners of the schools to the tune of N6 billion. The
Catholic Church, which owned the bulk of the schools, initially received
N762 million for 453 schools; the Anglican Church got N498 million.
But it did not stop there.
Seeing the impact, Obi’s successor, Willie Obiano, stuck to the policy.
Last May, Obiano presented cheques totalling N367 million to mission
schools in Anambra. This is a practical demonstration of the far-sighted
policy to return mission schools and partner the new owners for the
overall development of education in the state. It is no coincidence that
Anambra and Imo states have been leading in enrolment and performance
in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations, West African Senior
School Certificate Examinations and the Unity Colleges entrance
examinations.
Delta State, which based its
policy to return 40 mission schools on the need to decongest public
schools, has equally seen improvements. While the returned schools are
grossly underutilised because they were half-heartedly run by the
government, secondary public schools had an average of 80 pupils per
teacher. Contemporary economic trends are driven by knowledge, and if we
want to grow economically, our governments must implement a broad range
of policies to strengthen our education system. We implore other states
to follow suit and return the schools to their owners who are willing
to take them back.
To develop education, even
advanced economies have always permitted private tuition to run
side-by-side with public schools. In Britain for example, the Department
of Education and the Independent Schools Council say as of 2012, 1,234
of the 24,372 schools there were private. The private schools are
encouraged to award scholarships to pupils; this has led to a rise in
enrolment. A study commissioned by the ISC in 2014 estimated that
private schools contribute £11.7 billion to Britain’s gross value added,
apart from generating employment and tax.
In implementing the policy,
however, the Oyo State Government must consider the questions bothering
the teachers, organised labour and the pupils, who feel they will be
charged high fees in privately-owned schools. We identify with these
fears. The return should be structured in such a way that all the pupils
currently studying in the schools are not unduly burdened by the weight
of any new fees. Those of them who want to transfer to public schools
should be granted their wish, seamlessly. The same goes for the
teachers, who have expressed the fear that they were employed by the
government and would want their employment status to remain so. Ajimobi
should implement a process that will enable these teachers to retain
their services in the public service.
As for the rampaging pupils, who
destroyed property during their protests, they have gone beyond their
bounds. The government should not allow their indiscretion to go
unpunished. Arson is a criminal act and carrying weapons is illegal.
Secondary school pupils should not be associated with this. The law has
to take its full course.
Credit: PUNCH
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