The chairman, House

            Committee on Education in the House of Representatives, Hon Farouk Lawal has attributed the poor performance of students in the last Senior Secondary School Examination (SSSE) to long years of decay in the country’s educational system.

Hon. Lawal who spoke in an interview with The Tide correspondent at the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa said the poor result was a reflection of the level of decay in the education sector over the years, describing it as a major challenge and wake up call for the re-appraisal of the system.

He stressed the need for government and other stakeholders to identify the areas of challenge and come up with new ideas and policies that would ensur better result in years ahead.

According to him, in order to remedy the development in subsequent WAEC examinations, President Goodluck Jonathan recently summoned a summit on the education sector where the stakeholders brainstormed on how to address the major problems militating against the sector.

He pointed out that the improvement of the sector was a collective responsibility of the federal, state and local governments as well as communities and other stakeholders in the management of basic and secondary education.

Hon Lawal decried a situation whereby a large number of teachers in the secondary level are not qualified and are non-professionals without opportunities for training and retraining, regretting that the issue of monitoring and inspection of schools are treated with levity.

He identified inadequate funding, poor teaching and learning materials and lack of zeal and inability of students to take their studies serious as part of the challenge facing the educational development of the nation, saying “all these are challenges we must address if we truly want our results to be different.”

Lawal observed that no matter the system of education adopted, the sector would not make any headway if such system is not fully implemented, stressing that any programme that is haphazardly implemented would not yield good result.

Shedie Okpara