FG TO REVIEW UBEC ACT TO IMPROVE UNITY SCHOOLS
In a bid to address the dearth of infrastructure and efficiency in the administration of unity schools across Nigeria, Federal Government has revealed plans to review the Universal Basic Education Commission Act.
Minister of State for Education, Mr Nyesom Wike disclosed this during an interactive session with principals of the unity schools across the country, noteing that 'if the act is successfully reviewed, it will adequately fund unity colleges so that the major challenges rocking the colleges can be immediately curtailed.
Wike, who lamented that the colleges were the pride of the nation in the past, stressed that reverse was the case now.'Just two weeks ago, I paid an unscheduled visit to federal government college, Apo, I was alarmed at the extent of decay and decadence in that college. 'My conclusion was that as a government, as college administrators and as parents, we are being insensitive and unfair to the innocent students of that college. I thought the situation in federal government college, Apo was an isolated case. But I am told that virtually all the federal government colleges were in some serious state of disrepai.r'
Wike, who expressed concern over the state of disrepair in the schools and on the way forward stated that proactive measures must be put in place to restore sanity in all ramification to the unity colleges.
He assured that the Federal Ministry of Education was committed to tackling and reversing the massive infrastructural deficit in all the 104 unity colleges through expanding access, improving quality of products of the schools as well as teacher education, professionalism and ensuring greater autonomy in the administration of these colleges among others.
The minister charged the principals to play their roles diligently in turning around the fortune of the colleges and equally directed that guidelines of admission into unity schools be strictly adhered to by the principals, even as he promised that henceforth, promotion of teachers would be tied to a satisfactory performance evaluation of students' success rate in the subject(s) taught by the teachers.
He also saught the principals support in partnering with the Federal Government to revive the colleges to former status and reminded the principals that the Federal Government would not tolerate mismanagement of whatever funds they had been allocated by the FG for the management of the schools.