Despite the spirited effort by government to sanitize the education sector by ensuring the standardization of academic activities in schools at different levels, nothing seems to change, especially in the ownership and administration of private schools. NDUKWE CHIOMA LINDA takes a look at the rising profile of unregistered private schools and the way out
The unbridled proliferation of private primary and secondary schools in Nigeria and the inability of government to effectively regulate them, has continued to evoke hysteria amongst stakeholders who prefers proactive measures by government to stem the tide.
The problem with the schools is that most are unregistered and therefore not regulated, a development that leaves them out to continuously undermine quality academic standards. You should recall for instance the government of Anambra state recently shut down a good number of affected unregistered schools in the state.
The drive to sanitize the system should go beyond registering the unregistered schools, collect registration fees and leave them out to exploit the parents and guardians, to institutionalizing a process that ensures compliance to standards and adherence to laid down practice direction.
In private schools, proprietors are lords as parents have little or no choice on how they are been treated. Whenever a child gains admission into a private school after writing a very simple examination, a prospectus is then handed down to the parents of the child containing list of fees to be paid , which must be paid no matter how exorbitant it is.
When the Nigerian educational system was really strong, everyone knew the recommended books for each core subjects no matter where you are resident in, but these days, some private school proprietor even goes as far as writing his own text book to prevent his students from getting text books elsewhere.
The qualities of the text books are usually cheap and often deteriorate after each term making it impossible for others to use. Getting books from school invariably kills the smaller book shop of struggling Nigerians.
Also one attribute that is peculiar to private schools is how young children are stressed with extracurricular activities and extra mural classes that most times these children fall sick. They leave their house by 7:30 am only to get back home by 5 PM after been taught a series of subject that might even be a waste of time judging from the fact that these children lose concentration once they get tired which makes the long hours spent in school a total waste not to mention that a special fee is paid for these after school lessons.
What about the different wears private school students put on to go to school? Different outfits on different days of the week thereby causing confusion amongst students on who would out dress others.
The sooner these private schools come to realize that there is more to education than wearing different outfits to school and remember parents pay for these different outfits. There are also other ways by which proprietors still fish out money from parents of wards; the school bus which most times breaks down on the way every morning, end of term/ year parties and other frivolities though I agree that all work and no play makes jack a dull boy, but what use is it throwing all these hard earned naira when after leaving secondary school, wards can hardly performed as expected? We should wait till something irrevocable happens to our educational sector before something is been done about regulation of privates schools.
