Media chief tasks alumni on quality education

To improve the quality of education in the country, alumni must be involved in the content and quality of education being provided in our schools.A situation where old students are concerned with brick and mortar, building assembly halls, science laboratories, toilets, accommodation for teachers, without getting more involved with the content and quality of education being provided in our schools calls for concern.

Managing Director of The News, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, in a lecture said alumni members should come together to mount pressure on the government to pay more attention to this important aspect of education.He said that there is need to urgently solve admission problems, adding that only the best candidates should be admitted to study education or make cross-over career choices in the future.

The media guru said schools should not just be eager to fill vacancies in the classrooms, but set high marks for those to be admitted.
He said, “Government needs to offer irresistible incentives to brilliant students to take on teaching as a lifetime career.”

There should be incentives like full scholarships, cars and accommodation among others. We need to make the classrooms bubble once again with the best minds in our society, like it was in the 50s to early 70s.

“Government also needs to retain good teachers beyond the retirement age of 60. Government can make good offers to attract part-time, volunteer teachers, who can really pass down good stuff to the young ones”.He added that alumni associations on their own can scout for good teachers in important subjects such as English, Mathematics and the sciences.

“Schools are not well funded, teachers are not well paid. Many schools lack basic amenities such as tables and chairs. More often, we find the schools shut down, especially at the tertiary level with students spending extra years to graduate”.

While lamenting the vanishing spirit to strive for excellence in examinations and the desperation of parents and students to cheat the system, Onanuga lamented that parents, who love education now question whether it was worthwhile to do so, if at the end of the day, the children are unemployable.”In many homes today, parents are still taking care of their university graduates years after graduation because there are no jobs.