Our public school system has collapsed — FG

The Federal Government yesterday said the nation’s public school system had collapsed.

Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Sonny Echono, stated this while briefing members of the Senate Committee on Basic and Secondary Education on his ministry’s plans for pupils forced to stay at home by the COVID - 19 pandemic.

He said: “The public school system, as we know it, has collapsed. In most states around the country, primary school teachers are being owed salaries for months.

“In the last few months, I’ve visited some schools. In rural areas, what’s going on there is a quasi private education.

“The same teachers who are being owed salaries for months are doing private teaching either in their home or in a small hall.”

Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, said the ministry had presented a proposal to the National Assembly on school reopening for the federal lawmakers to criticise and make their inputs.

“In the document we’ve provided, we’ve suggested how we can move our education sector forward in this pandemic period. We don’t want to make it known at this period so that some people will not take our proposal for guidelines for schools reopening.

“This is because people publish fake guidelines every day which I always come on air to debunk. What we have now is a proposal,” he said.

The vice chairman of the panel, Senator Akon Eyakenyi, expressed the fears that the academic calendar could be distorted in public schools where no visible arrangement was being made to teach the children at home unlike their private schools counterparts.