The state of government owned secondary schools
The pictures you are seeing are some of the pictures of a typical government owned secondary schools in Nigeria; no windows, no doors, with lots of abandoned projects.
A country that is richly blessed with lots of both human and material resources is still faced with lots of educational challenges, one of them being poor conducive environment for learning. When I visited one of the government owned secondary schools, I took some pictures to support my write up, as one can see in the picture, the school have no windows, doors and other basic needs of good learning, I went there during an off school day so as to get the pictures well with no distractions. After taking a walk around the environment, I began to wonder how the students of that school or similar state of school can perform well academically, I wondered what the students would be doing each time it rained with heavy winds, I wondered the kind of attitudes that can be exhibited by the students in those schools. I entered some of the class rooms and I saw the state of the classes; few seats to sit on and some of the classrooms had no seats for the students.
Have you ever put yourself in the shoes of those students? The sad news is that majority of Nigerian growing students attends or attended a government owned secondary schools; this is because majority of Nigerian parents cannot afford the price of a private school which is far better than government secondary schools when compared in terms of academic performances of the students and state of infrastructure. No wonder most government owned schools hardly produce any student with five credits pass required for any Nigerian student to apply for admission in to Nigerian Universities. One of the teachers who spoke to me in my early visit to one of the public schools within the country lamented on the behaviour of the students, “I don’t know what’s wrong with most of the students here, do you know that one of the students who is in SSS 1 recently did his child naming ceremony, he even came and invited some of the teachers and he is just sixteen years old, that’s how most of them behave.”
When I spoke with one of the Vice principals, who didn’t know that I was compiling a report, she complained that most of the students are always hiding inside some of the uncompleted buildings and are always feeling too big to listen to the teachers, this actually make them to graduate with terrible results, some of them even tell us “that they would beat us up if we are not careful.” When I asked the VP if any effort was on grand to assist the students with extra classes, she said, “How can we do extra teaching? The salary is not enough and the students are not willing to pay for the services” the picture became clearer to me; the teachers believed in more pay, more services. I went to one of the classes on that very day on the bases that I wanted to speak to the SSS 3 students and advised them. After speaking to them, I asked them if they would allow me to give them extra classes for free and they responded positively, it then occurred to me that the teachers might have being demanding too much from the poor students. One of the SSS 3 students from art class lamented, “The government have abandoned us, our libraries have no books, our teachers are not willing to teach us well, sometimes rain beat us while in class, we feel heat most times because we don’t have fans, and I feel I have the opportunity to attend a private school.” The entire student I spoke to blame the government and teachers for their plights. The security man who allowed me in to take the pictures told me that for the past six years, no student from that school has made the five credits pass required to gain admission in to Nigerian universities; this has made the students to rely on external exterminations such as GCE and NECO to make the requirements.
I strongly believe that the pictures can tell the true story, it is worst at the state and local government level, the schools are nothing to write home about, and teachers are less concerned while the students are not encouraged to read.