Oyo establishes governing board for public schools

The Oyo State Government has created a School’s Governing Board (SGB) to provide management functions for secondary schools and meet performance targets.

This is contained in a White Paper on the report of a Committee on Participatory Management of Schools released at the weekend.

A statement by the Commissioner for Information, Toye Arulogun, explained that the white paper was released after weeks of careful analysis of the report based on international best practices on government policies. He added that the recommendations would serve as strategic framework for improving quality and performance in the education sector.

The commissioner stated that the government adopted most of the recommendations of the committee but with variations in nomenclature and scope.

The major highlight of the white paper included introduction of a new model of schools management called School’s Governing Board (SGB).

The SGB model would be in two categories with membership drawn from accredited representative of Parent-Teacher Association, accredited representative of old students’ association, accredited non-partisan community leader, the head boy/head girl of the school, the school principal to serve as secretary, the Local Inspector of Education (LIE), representative of local govt. council/LCDA and identified philanthropists and that with the SGB, various units, organs and departments in the management of education would need to be re-aligned to avoid ambiguity, overlapping functions and inefficiency.

It stressed that the SGB membership/leadership and scope shall be suitably determined by the government and not be entitled to any form of remuneration.

In both categories, government shall be responsible for payment of salaries of teaching and non-teaching staff, curriculum development and quality control, and each SGB is mandated to meet once a month.

The White Paper stated that functions of the SGB shall include improving the quality of school programmes and efficiency of teachers thereby raising students’ achievement level, provision of adequate teaching and learning resources, full participation of stakeholders in management and effective management of schools among others.

The White Paper also resolved to expedite action on the implementation of the Education Trust Fund recently signed into law.

It further revealed the new categorisation of schools highlighting lower and upper limits in terms of students enrolment, teachers posting, and other resources, saying that schools would be categorized as urban schools with a population of 1000 and above, semi-urban schools with between 250 – 999 students’ population and Rural Schools with a population of 60 – 249 taking into consideration the Universal Basic Education Commission standard, probable infrastructure, current enrolment and availability of teachers.

On the discrepancies in the data submitted by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST), Teaching Service Commission (TESCOM), the government directed that all agencies in the sector must be restructured in such a manner that will ensure effective communication and interaction between them and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology emphasizing the need for periodic verification exercise of personnel, students and infrastructure by the various agencies.

It also directed that each agency should gather, store and provide dependable data but the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology must be the repository and sole issuing authority of such.

The Governor had on July 12 inaugurated a 19-member committee on participatory management of Schools.