Enugu Assembly backs competence tests for school principals

The Enugu House of Assembly has given its support for competence examination for principals of secondary schools in the state organised by the Post Primary School Management Board (PPSMB).

Mr Mathew Ugwueze, the Chairman of the House Committee on Education, made this known on Monday in Enugu while speaking on a petition by some school principals challenging the examination.

Ugwueze, while addressing some of the principals, warned that legislators would not tolerate frivolous petitions that could truncate resolves to move the state's education sector out of precarious situation.

He said that the petition, which challenged the PPSMB authority to summon public school principals for such test, was in bad taste 'and a call to the dark days'.

'As far as I am concerned, that petition holds no water and you should not send such to me again because I will not attend to it.

'We are all in one direction to achieve a better and sound education for our children. I want to tell us that education without tests and promotion makes no meaning,' he said.

The lawmaker described as unfortunate that some stakeholders who were products of public schools had not shown enough empathy with the state government in revamping the sector.

He, however, commended the state government for the achievements it had recorded in the education sector and for ensuring that public schools came back to limelight.

Ugwueze tasked the principals as products of public schools to reflect on their days in school to determine if the prevailing situations in the sector were encouraging.

'I am telling you as one who is a product of a public school and from a very primitive village that is just experiencing the presence of a secondary school for the first time of its existence.

'The very first secondary school in my village just got underway and the principal only resumed on Sept. 21, while the teachers may have just started to arrive.

'It is as bad as that, yet I saw myself in the House of Assembly. Please you should preach to your conscience and contribute in taking the sector forward,' he said.

It would be recalled that prior to the commencement of the 2016/2017 academic session, the PPSMB organised a competence examination for public school principals and their vice to ascertain their work ethic.

The exercise however did not go down well with a few of the participants who sent a petition to the State House of Assembly.