FAILING EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS

For its numerous contribution, especially to national development, education has been receiving special attention from the federal, state and local governments. This has resulted in several capital projects all geared towards enhancing basic training and better manpower building for the future generations. These dreams are however not shared by some secondary schools in Lagos.

Some students of a public secondary school in Lagos were recently seen altering their examination report cards. In a show of defiance, they changed their low grades in full glare of the public. On investigation, it was revealed that the students. were among those who were asked to repeat due to poor examination results.

Journalists approached the vice principal of the school who confirmed the revelations, "We know them", she said, "We deal with them everyday, even some teachers are involved. Once the initial marking is complete, we make sure that the master report is submitted to the principal, this minimises to the barest minimum any chances of success.

Seated in her book-laden office,however, the vice principal seems more concerned about inflicting eternal punishment of these students rather than repatriating them."We have other important things to do than dealing with those fraudulent students," she said, slamming her hand on her dusty woody table. She also revealed other pranks of the students including buying new examination result sheets among others.

At the state education board, a staff of the board disclosed that principals have been adviced to make use of duplicating paper so as to foil any mischief. This development is coming at a time when the Lagos state government mandated that every student must pass with at least six credits including English and Mathematics before being promoted.

With reports,such as this, its a no brainer why general failure rates are highly recorded in the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) result yearly. With no punitive system or will by school authourities, pupils and some teachers within the system and are compromising effective training of these wards, efforts at resuscitating this latent sector may well be a long shot, if these anomalies are not tackled.

By Odedeyi Abiodun
www.donabiodun.blogspot.com