UbongAbasi Ise

By UbongAbasi Ise In recent times, pictures and video files had propped up on social media to expose the nakedness of our educational system. In certain online pictures, children were seen sitting on bare floor, some sit on blocks, while others avail themselves on any manner of makeshift seats, just to receive learning. In a video, students were seen supposedly writing examinations under a leaked roof during downpour. If you ask to know the ownership of the schools where all these anomalies were found, you would find out that those ramshackle institutions belong to the government.                   In a public school where class size is 120 to 150 students, one would see students’ writing desks placed in several rows from wall to wall with no space for movement. Some of the desks would scatter carelessly on the verandah outside the classroom. Students sit jam-packed inside the classroom while others sit on the veranda for the same lesson. You would see a teacher standing in fr

In the spirit of 2019 Teachers Day celebration, Prof. Antiabong Ekong,  the current Dean of Faculty of Education in the University of Uyo, who is also a former Commissioner for Education in Akwa Ibom State, bares his mind on the state of education in the Akwa Ibom State. In this interview with UBONGABASI ISE, the seasoned educationist speaks on wrongful conception of free education programme. He condemns the proliferation of illegal private schools and lauded the state government for clamping down on unapproved private schools in the state, while calling on the total review of the state's educational policy and the need to expose Akwa Ibom children to vocationally-oriented school curriculum in order to solve unemployment question, Excerpt : Nigerian teachers are celebrating Teachers' Day, what do you they really have to celebrate, sir? When  you talk about celebration, they have something to celebrate. If nothing, they celebrate the profession; you tell people that you are sti