Leverage On Other Sources To Fund Education, Kenechukwu Nwosu Recommends
Posted by FN Editor | 3 years ago | 874 times
...Lauds Ikpeazu's Bifurcation Policy
An education administrator and former Abia State Universal Basic Education Executive Chairman,Mr Kenechukwu Ugochukwu Nwosu has recommended other means of funding the education sector to help lessing the burden on the government.
Nwosu who revealed these while interacting with Newsmen in Umuahia , explained that education is the best means of eradicating all these social vices facing Nigeria as a nation , including Banditry , kidnapping,robbery ,terrorism among others. According to him "a well educated generation will most likely have more conscious nation builders than nation destroyers because they are literate, enlightened to be the strength of their nation and the future belongs to the educationally transformed ones".
He recommended for government to allocate more funds to education, ensure and sustain regular payement of teachers salaries, which will motivate young people to go into teaching profession and "we are going to have teachers that are passionate and will bring out their best as well as inculcate good habits to the students , because they spend more time with the students than their parents."
He recommended that education should be made attractive because those who seek ventures to invest into or sponsor always consider areas of high participation and prospect of further increase, according to him "we can attract more funding externally, because our nation is blessed with lots of people that want to help out in funding education, donor agencies , international organizations and other groups will invest in areas that are attractive and value added. So we can improve on ICT, sports, skill acquisition, school feeding and other activities that help to increase our enrolment and opportunities".
"Our education needs a clear cut plan and well organized system, which will attract even communities, religious institutions to invest in public education. There is also need for designing of education sector plans as well as short, medium and long term plans to be designed inline with global best practices while still given due consideration to our perculiar needs of the population and within a specified location. This will give interested funds providers with a clear picture of current status and the direction of the educational plan being adopted" as no funds can be obtained without a viable plan.
He further underscored the importance of having accurate education data for the population which will be used to make educational policies. He likened financing educational institutions like financing business whereby investors and donors insist on having a well prepared business plan showing strenghts, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, financial projections, marketing plans, accountability systems etc.
He said systematic data captured should also contain demographic data, geographic data and financial data that are consistent, reviewed and updated at least quarterly.
According to him , " the data will contain the number of students per teacher in a school, gender, number of physically challenged students, how many students that are inclined to sciences, arts, vocational studies, visually impaired, gifted children, special needs etc and even infrastructure and facilities available in such schools" , saying that if for example a science based organization wants to sponsor science learning in schools with laboratories, scholarships, trainings , they will need the data, adding that data is very important even donor agencies can not fund education without seeing a systematic captured data in line with global best practices, he insisted.
Nwosu recommended for schools to advertise their potentials in education, noting that as a nation ," we need to advertise ourselves on what efforts we have put in place to bring up a new generation of people and experts to be able to lead and pilot the affairs of this country.
Government should encourage and support media agencies and organisations to show case the human resource potentials we have and the gains to be achieved in investing in education in Nigeria.
Exceptionally skilled students should be showcased while school attended by prominent world achievers should be advertised to attract attention to such schools with the idea of preserving the legacies that helped produce such people."
He streamlined the need to produce graduates that are employable, backed with finance , saying that is where the seed of entrepreneurship has to be sustained in our schools. He also said, "it is entrepreneurship that drive Asian and American economy that led to the emergence of Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jack Ma as well Nigeria can leverage on the power of skills and entrepreneurship to build brands and personalities that can compete favourably on the global scale". He gave a clear picture of the Aba skills and entrepreneurship design whereby Abia State is presently expanding the business frontiers of Aba to incorporate a business school that will merge Street smartness with academic excellence to produce educated and skill force human resources".
He in addition recommended that people should be encouraged to partner in education," we should be able to have people that will come together, put their resources together, finance and set up schools and hand them over to government to manage . " This will show seriousness, distribution of responsibilities, division of labour, contribution of ideas/experiences and most of all potentials of transparency, accountability and credible administration of financial resources which are the key things financiers, donors and sponsors of education meticulously consider before making commitments" .
Nwosu ,however applauded Governor Ikpeazu for initiating the friends of school initiative, describing it as an excellent initiative which helps people to support schools they have soft spot for , schools they attended or schools in their locality to renovate dilapidated structures, provide comfortable seats, supply play equipments, science kits, audio-visual devices, instructional materials, security gadgets, shoes, uniform, musical equipments, scholarships etc.
He also said alumni and Old Students Associations of schools also can give back to the schools they passed through, stating that all these recommendations can help to fund education in Abia State and Nigeria at large if we package ourselves very well and ensure accountability and transparency, he said.
He stressed on the need for proper needs assessment, accountability and transparency in the administration of funds provided by donors, sponsors and givers saying that when strict guidelines are adhered to, reports made transparent , funds will continue to be received to improve education.
The former Executive Chairman of Abia State Universal Basic Education Board, lauded the Governor Ikpeazu administration for the new policy of bifurcation of the Abia Ministry of Education, describing it as a right step in the right direction.
He disclosed that in this present policy, it means that there will be Ministry of Basic Education which will be in charge of nursery ,basic and middle basic education , while the other Ministry of Post-Basic Education will be handling Senior Secondary Schools and Tertiary Institutions.
He opined that with the new policy of bifurcation ,the Governor has shown that he is a teacher and scholar in education ,who understands the need to put in more efforts so as to get results.
He pointed out that with the new policy , " we are going to have a well built up system backed up by government policy ,which will make the school have technocrats synergizing with government to improve standard of education and public schools will see more monitoring, more supervisions from the state government and more eyes are going to be channeled to schools and Abia State is now going to record more success in external examinations ," you can see that our Governor is sensitive to times and seasons,the governor wants to have a greater participation of government in basic education and that of post education, hence Abia will experience enormous impact , it is indeed a right step in a right direction and is going to ventilate the ministries to have other experts, which government is going to bring in to make sure education is giving best attention.
It is a very much welcome idea ,I commend the Governor for that ,I have never seen it this good ,it is the first of its kind and he deserves commendations from Abians"
He urged parents to get involved in the training and disciplining of students , noting that parents have alot of work to do, even as he advised students to learn how to live with what they have and be contented with what their parents provided for them, adding that private education providers both public and private should adhere strictly to the rules and regulations provided by the government and desist from acts by few who still encourage exam malpractice and other unlawful actives.
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