By Martin Paul
with agency report
No fewer than one million children would be thrown out of schools if the Lagos state government make good its plans to shut down 10, 444 unregistered schools in the state.
Blueprint investigations showed that an average of 50 students are in private junior and secondary schools in Lagos state, while an average of 40 pupils could be found in nursery and private primary schools
We also gathered that some of these schools are those patronised by parents, who could not have access to public schools and low income earners who could not afford the high brow private schools that might not be affected by the closure.
Our checks confirmed that these ramshackle schools could be found in areas like Badagry, Agege, Mushin, Iyana Ipkaja, Agboju, Epe, Itire, Oshodi, Okokomaiko, Shomolu, Ikorodu, among others, where the low income earners are residing.
Some parents, who spoke with our correspondents, lamented that the shutdown would affect many families and their wards, even as they expressed the belief that there could be alternative way of dealing with the matter.
“I think what the state government should do is to encourage proprietors of these schools to improve on their structures and services so that their schools could be registered and approved, and not to shut them down, considering the fact that it would affect people”, Emmanuel Ifeanyi, an engineer, told Blueprint.
Another respondent, Ayodele Olutayo, who resides in Agege area of the state, said shutting down unregistered private schools would compound problems for the state government as the number of public schools cannot accommodate the number of children that would be affected.
He called on government to have a re-think, noting that some of the affected schools were denied registration because of peculiar circumstances, submitting that closure was not the only to sanitise the system.
Report at our disposal stated that the Lagos state government had discovered that of the 15,000 private schools operating in the state, only 4,556 were registered, a situation that gave impetus for proposed shutdown.
Deputy governor of the state, Dr. Oluranti Adebule, at the 3rd quarterly stakeholders’ forum of private schools owners, had said: “Government is not comfortable with our discovery that over 15,000 private schools are operating in the State and only just 4,556 are approved and registered; Let me state it clearly, henceforth, Lagos State Government will no longer allow private schools that are not duly registered by the Lagos State Ministry of Education to operate in the State, their operation becomes illegal henceforth in the State,” he warned.
She disclosed that a total of 119 prospective school owners, who applied for registration, had been granted provisional approval, having met the guidelines set by the state government, warning that schools not registered or approved by the State Ministry of Education would not be allowed to operate.
However, she assured that before anything could be done, government would enumerate all registered private schools, starting from Monday, September 26.
“The enumeration exercise is aimed at providing the State government with accurate data and necessary information on private schools so as to set effective quality control mechanism in place and monitor compliance,” she stated.
