NUT Wants High Standard In Private Schools

The Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT), Ebonyi State chapter, has called on the state government to standardise the operations of private schools in the state.

Chairman of the union, Mr Joseph Nweke, told newsmen that government should streamline operations of private schools to comply with the minimum best standard.

According to him, private schools play crucial role in the development of education in the state hence their operations and control should be streamlined through an enabling law.

He said that a good number of the private schools in the state lacked the necessary infrastructure to function as schools and that most of them used unqualified teaching staff to run their academic programmes.

“Some of these private schools operate in shanties and make-shift structures. They lack educational facilities such as libraries, conducive classroom blocks and administrative block, among others.

“A good number of the schools use non-professionals to teach,’’ he said, adding that the use of unqualified teachers for teaching and learning was capable of undermining qualitative and functional education in the state.

“A visit to most of these schools shows that they lack the infrastructure needed for academic activities.

“Most worrisome is that only few of the schools can boast of teachers with NCE or bachelor degrees in education,” he said.

The chairman noted that if the current trend was not checked, it was capable of eroding the quality of students produced in some of our schools.

He condemned the indiscriminate increase in tuition and other fees in most of the private schools, describing it as exploitative.

“Government has to intervene and address the high tuition fees and other service charges paid in private secondary schools,’’ he added.

Nweke said that it was the right of every Nigerian child to access affordable and qualitative secondary education either in the private or public schools.