The inability of the La\u00adgos State Government to match growing demand for quality and affordable educa\u00adtion with human resource and infrastructural development, is taking its toll on the state\u2019s free and compulsory education from primary to junior and senior secondary schools.<\/p>\n
Lagos State, the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria, nay West Africa often prides as the model of excellence in the provi\u00adsion of education in Africa, by providing high quality educa\u00adtion, accessible to all learners through effective and efficient management of resources for the attainment of self-reliance and socio-economic develop\u00adment.<\/p>\n
Sadly, these lofty dream is just written in black and white without implementation as it\u2019s an open secret that increasing number of parents prefers low-cost private schools to meet their wards educational demand to going to the free public schools, due to array of reasons.<\/p>\n
Concerned about low qual\u00adity and access to learning in public schools and deterred by high costs in approved private schools in the state, parents are withdrawing their children from public schools in prefer\u00adence to low-cost unapproved schools in densely populated ar\u00adeas and slums.<\/p>\n
In 2013, the United Kingdom Department for International Development, DFID launched an intervention for the Develop\u00ading Effective Private Education Nigeria, DEEPEN, with a five year plan to create a vibrant and dynamic market for private edu\u00adcation in low-cost schools across Lagos.<\/p>\n
In a research conducted by DEEPEN across the state it was discovered that there are about 18, 000 private schools cater\u00ading for the requirements from pre-school to senior secondary school.<\/p>\n
It was also discovered that these schools categorised under low-paying with tuitions rang\u00ading from N0 to N25,000 per year, N25,001 to N50,000 for medium-cost and N50,001 to N100,000 high cost private schools respectively.<\/p>\n
The findings also revealed that these schools are currently catering for about 1.4 million school children as against the 1.1 million being served by the public schools which stand currently at 1,600.<\/p>\n
With these findings at least 55 per cent of schoolchildren in Lagos and still counting, have left government (public) schools for unapproved schools in low-resource settlements despite the state government\u2019s free educa\u00adtion.<\/p>\n
Quality of education contin\u00adues to be an important consid\u00aderation in parents\u2019 choice of school. On average, perceptions of the quality of learning and teachers\u2019 performance were similar across all the sites.<\/p>\n
Overall, parents perceived that the quality of learning and teachers\u2019 performance was higher in private schools than in government schools.<\/p>\n
Findings by this reporter show that proliferation of low-cost illegal schools and esca\u00adlating insecurity in informal settlements are gradually erod\u00ading confidence in public schools. The study conducted in Lagos Island area of the state, also brought out the socio-cultural trends that determine how par\u00adents make decisions on quality of education they want for their children by sending their wards to private schools than the gov\u00adernment own despite visible disadvantages of these so-called schools.<\/p>\n
These choices are determined and not limited to the \u201ccheap-is-expensive\u201d mantra, parents and guardians in poor economic set\u00adtings invest in their children\u2019s future as they give the often overcrowded and overly under-resourced government-aided schools a wide berth.<\/p>\n
Parents frequently said that \u2018over population\u2019 in government schools was largely to blame for the low standards in govern\u00adment schools.<\/p>\n
Parents used the expres\u00adsion \u2018over population\u2019 to refer to both the huge size of gov\u00adernment schools and, in some cases, their overcrowded con\u00additions.<\/p>\n
Related concerns were insuf\u00adficient classrooms and short\u00adages of teachers.<\/p>\n
Over population can also be said to be blamed for poor learning conditions as analysts believed that an over populated class is too intimidating for young children and, in some schools, it made the environ\u00adment unsafe for the younger ones.<\/p>\n
Parents often responded to questions about why they pre\u00adferred private schools by say\u00ading that the teachers \u2018know how to teach\u2019. In contrast, claims were made about government school teachers with parents frequently saying the teachers did not care about the children rather they concentrated more on making extra money from the sales of wares to their col\u00adleagues.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s surprising that despite DEEPEN\u2019s survey which re\u00advealed that most low-cost pri\u00advate school teachers are not qualified teachers, parents who patronize them are not bothered about such claim. Rather they are interested in the attention the teachers give to their wards.<\/p>\n
Also parents who mostly cannot afford formal private schools, prefer unapproved low-cost schools in informal settle\u00adments because the student-book ratio according to them is even and teaching is relatively stu\u00addent-based.<\/p>\n
This, it was discovered, was informed by some factors promi\u00adnently of whom is security and well-being of their children and availability of \u2018Early Childhood Development Component\u2019 clos\u00adest to their work place and shops as the case may be, which most public schools lack.<\/p>\n
A trader who deals on lace material in Balogun Market and have two children in a school lo\u00adcated in the market noted that she choose the school based on the proximity to her shop.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t need to worry about going to pick my child after clos\u00ading hour. I stay in Ikorodu but the school is just a stone throw to my shop. So it enables me to concentrate on my market , while the child gets the needed education,\u201d she stated.<\/p>\n
She also said that she decided to take her child to the school because of the medium of com\u00admunication, which is mostly English language which enables the children to communicate ef\u00adfectively.<\/p>\n
Analysts are of the view that more of such private schools should be encouraged as alter\u00adnative for those who cannot af\u00adford those expensive ones but the government should check\u00admate exploitation by checking the excesses of the proprietors.<\/p>\n
Schools are also advised to introduce and emphasize on debating competition right from class four to encourage teachers to work hard in teaching their pupils how to read and express themselves using good spoken English. This would help overcome inferiority complex and improve speech and reading skills.<\/p>\n
Source: National Mirror<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The inability of the La\u00adgos State Government to match growing demand for quality and affordable educa\u00adtion with human resource and infrastructural development, is taking its toll on the state\u2019s free and compulsory education from primary to junior and senior secondary schools. Lagos State, the commercial nerve centre of Nigeria, nay West Africa often prides as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n