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The Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology in Oyo state, Professor Adeniyi Olowofela, on Thursday said that the state government was carrying out a surgical operation on the education sector in the state.
Professor Olowofela, who spoke during a Ministerial Press Briefing, held at the Film Theatre, Ministry of Information Culture and Tourism, explained that the state government has introduced the ‘No Automatic Promotion” policy and started a unified examination system as well as harmonized grading for S.S 1 & 2 students in public schools in the state to improve the state’s performances in external examinations, WAEC and NECO.
Recall that a recent WAEC performance ranking of students across the states in Nigeria for 2016 put Oyo at the 29th position.
READ: Oyo, Ondo, tumble as Abia, Rivers, lead WASSCE 2016 performance
But according Olowofela, the government’s efforts in repositioning education in the state have started to yield results with the state coming 2nd in NECO external examination in 2016, better than 12th position of 2015.
He urged the media should be careful with the reports they publish so as not to mislead the general public on the present rating of the state in external examinations.
Prof. Olowofela stated that the recently introduced School Governing Boards for Public secondary schools in the state is a master stroke that is changing the schools’ system, emphasising that the paradigm has changed and the SGBs are improving the standard of education and infrastructures in Oyo State schools.
He posited that the SGB model will outlive the present administration as it is yielding positive results already, explaining “One of our SGBs put N125m to renovate their school and they are presently trying to raise N1bn now. The SGB is a master stroke that will change education in the state forever. The Government has also approved and initiated the process of renovating 100 schools with about N5bn comprising of N3b counterpart funding and N1.9bn which is a combination of funds generated from the students’ levies and state government’s internally generated revenue.
“We want our students to take advantage of our Oyo State Model Education System Intervention (OYOMESI) to build good character and the Ajumose Legacy Note for secondary schools to download text books from the web, while the hard copies are also available in the Ministry,” the Commissioner stressed.
Prof. Olowofela said that the Education Trust Fund (ETF) inaugurated recently by Governor Abiola Ajimobi would complement the budgetary allocation at all levels by the government, adding that 5% of VAT to State/Local Government will go to ETF as well as 1% from IGR and 1% paid by students of private schools will go into the pool.