Don blames parents for examination malpractices

By Usman Ibn A. Lapai
Kaduna

Associate Professor of Criminology at the Federal University, Wukari, Taraba state, Prof John Omale, has blamed the rise in examination malpractices in the country to parents who support their children to pass examinations at all costs, including “paying teachers to award marks and grades to their children to get certificates.”
Speaking to newsmen yesterday in Kaduna, the university don said “the attitude of parents who fail to encourage their children to learn and fail to scold them when the students don’t go for lectures but are loitering around town, is the cause of the unrest, hooliganism and other social evils in our diverse ethno-cultural systems.”
According to him, poor funding of education in the country by government, especially primary and secondary schools, also encourages examination malpractices where students pay teachers to write WASC and NECO for them.
Omale also said that the gross shortage of qualified teachers and lack of learning facilities affected educational development in the country, pointing out that qualified teachers would not work in schools where their welfare will not be taken care of. He said that was why non-qualified teachers who have nothing to offer go to public schools like primary and secondary schools to teach as the last option because the educational system in the country has been bastardised over the years.
“People go there to get certificates instead of going to school to learn. The frequent change of educational policy affected the sector and the political instability in the country has also affected the sector and has caused the certificates acquired non-effective compared to the other schools outside the world.
“In the North-east, Boko Haram has effectively discouraged students from going to school. In some parts of the region there are no schools and even parents try to discourage their children from going to school. In Nigeria, the educational policy affected the sector and if we don’t get things right, education will continue to suffer. In those days, both the teachers and students are well taken care of. But today the elite take their children abroad to study.”

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