Every government is conscious of the importance and pivotal role played by education in the advancement of any society. It is for this reason that succeeding governments in this country vote huge sums of money in their annual budget to the sector.

Unfortunately however, these jumbo allocations do not really get to solve the problem of individual schools.

Some public schools especially in the rural areas are nothing to write home about due to the poor and broken infrastructure in many of them.

It cannot be contested that schools, particularly the public ones are no longer what they used to be in terms of quality and maintenance of infrastructure.

In some schools children sit on the floor to learn, while some others contend with ill-trained teachers.

The result of these is poor quality education and this is why the rich in society choose to send their children to private schools, where huge amount of money is paid as fees.

Infact the situation is such that in some cases two classes are combined into one to beat the dearth of teaching staff. Also the refusal of teachers to accept postings to rural communities to decongest existing classes lead to overcrowding of classrooms which makes proper concentration and learning difficult.

This is despite the fact that millions of children are still not in school because of poverty; as such parents complain that inspite of the government’s impression that education is free, there are still certain demands that require money to settle. That is the reason why some poor parents who have great passion for education try by all means to give their children basic education, which forms a spring board from which these children realise their goals in life.

This category of parents are those who engage their children in hawking of wards after school or during holidays in order to generate funds to meet family needs and also assist in payment of school fees not minding the dangers posed by sending such children to hawk on the streets.

There is also another group of parents who give their children out to others as househelp on an agreement that such children may be sponsored to pursue their education.

Despite these challenges faced by the less privileged in our society, the free education introduced by the government, particularly in Rivers State has drastically reduced the househlep syndrome and positive changes are going on as some states now have laws prohibiting hawking by children of school age.

Really, the time has come for everyone to work together in realising the much talked about Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for free and qualitative education for all throughout the country and no investment should be considered too much for the development of our human capital especially for our children who one considered as our future leaders. We can achieve this through adequate and proper planning.

In some of our coastal states, education has not reached some communities and just like the nomads of the Northern region, they are considered disadvantaged due to the peculiar terrain the people find themselves, their should be conscious efforts to spread education to such people in their areas as a way of making them acquire basic education for their future empowerment. The basic education under reference provided at the primary and the secondary school level should be of high quality, compete with adequate teaching and learning materials and infrastructures akin to the ones now provided by the present administration of Governor Chibuike Amaechi in the newly built model schools in some parts of Rivers State.

Till date the free education we have is basically on paper and not in real terms because some low income earners still cannot cope with the demands, efforts should be made to ensure a more practicable free education in the real sense of the word to make more people benefit.

Also the three tiers of government namely, the federal, state and local governments should step up efforts to assist genuinely indigent students willing to study with scholarships especially at the tertiary level to justify the huge instrument on education, as well as upgrade facilities in existing public schools and employment of teachers committed to uplifting education to a higher level.

Patterson Koko