Establishment Of Illegal Schools In Lagos
than a decade, yet the state government has definite criteria that private schools must meet before starting out. This is aside the state government has a policing agency, the Office of the Education Quality Assurance saddled with the responsibilities of approving and monitoring activities of schools in Lagos State, including private schools. Despite these two provisions, the state is burdened with soaring illegal schools. In its revised document on guidelines for public and private schools in the state in 2016, the checklist for school approval stated that building structure must be purpose built/ restructured to suit purpose with an approved building plan or rented building with at least five years lease agreement.
The document added that aside from a certificate of occupancy, the school must not be situated within 500 meters radius from another, with the minimum land requirement for nursery and primary schools shall be one plot of 60 by 120.
“The building and premises shall be certified as suitable by the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development.”
It further said that the school shall have a minimum of five special rooms; library, sick bay, a functional ICT room with equipment, a science laboratory, and head teacher’s office. There will also be nine classrooms and a sizeable multipurpose hall that can be used for indoor games.
The state government added that a maximum of 25 pupils in nursery section with one adult to eight pupils, one qualified teacher along with a teaching assistant and 35 with two adults, at least one professionally qualified teacher and an assistant in primary section.
The government further said that the minimum dimensions of each classroom shall be 2.4m ( height) x 8.4m ( length) x 6.8m ( width) while a standard classroom should provide an average floor two space of 1.2m or metre square per student.
“Every class should have a well- resourced reading corner. All classrooms shall be well lit and ventilated and shall normally have two doors and four windows.”
It also stated that academically and professionally head teacher and qualified teachers in all classes with teaching assistants in all nursery classes.
The state government added that six toilets indicating clear signs for male and female toilets, just as certificates of medical fitness of food vendors while portable water and wash hand basins in strategic places in the school. “There shall be demarcated white, sharp sand filled playground or playground with artificial grass carpet, along with outdoor learning resources provision for nursery classes.”
The school is also required to provide one general and one electrical functional fire extinguisher, as well as four sand buckets in strategic areas in the building, with safety signs and instructions affixed on the school walls.
The state government expects the painting of all the inner classes and corridors in bright colours with beautiful display boards including the fence and natural/ potted assorted beautiful flowers.
On the other hand, some of the duties and responsibilities of the Office of Education Quality Assurance provided on its website include, monitoring and ensuring standards in all schools below tertiary level; accreditation of schools for external examinations; establishment of database of both public and private school below tertiary level in the state which shall include all reports of assessments, grading, quality assurance evaluation of public and private education institutions including the review and amendment of the school curriculum in collaboration of all stakeholders; production of annual state of education report, investigation of all matter affecting learners and staff of educational institutions, ensuring that every child in school receives qualitative education through collaboration with other stakeholders.
Despite the OEQA duties is to maintained standard and monitor activities of private schools, the Registrar/ Chief Executive of Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria ( TRCN), Professor Josiah Ajiboye, recently said that based on a survey carried out by a consultant working with the TRCN, over 70 per cent of teachers in private schools in the South- West including Lagos are not qualified to be registered with TRCN.
“Whereas a large percentage of teachers in public schools are qualified and have registered with TRCN, the same cannot be said of teachers in private schools.
“The TRCN has focused on mobilisation of teachers in private schools to first get qualified by registering for Postgraduate Diploma in Education or Professional Diploma in Education as the case may be, to make them registerable with TRCN so that they can be certified.”
He also called on states to vet the list of teachers before registering new schools, demanding that state governments before registering these private schools should ask that they make available the list of their teachers as part of the conditions for registration to be sure they are qualified, registered and licensed. Ajiboye noted that some private school owners promote quackery in teaching to maximise profit.
“They employ just anyone and unleash them on our children. We have been having discussions with private school owners to discourage such practices. Yes, indeed, government alone cannot provide education to the teeming population of Nigerian children, private participation is a welcome development. “However, the commercialisation of education must be discouraged. Competent and qualified teachers are sine qua non to quality education.”
To Francis, that these unapproved schools remain operational for years after setting up is rather unfortunate, despite there are requirement for schools to operate and a regulatory agency, whose primary task is to check the activities of illegal schools.
She added that the regulatory agency seems to be paying more attention to the big private schools which are able to pay the government some form of taxes and levies.
“Moreover, these low cost schools are not willing to pick up forms to become legalised because of the amount involved in getting legalised. The Ministry of Basic Education does not seem to have the capacity to carry out the monitoring of the huge number of schools, bearing in mind that the ministry has not been able to adequately monitor the 1020 public primary schools and about 650 public secondary schools.”
Also speaking on why some of the illegal schools have continued to operate for decades, Ibidapo argued that such schools have been able to survive because they have colluded with insiders in the ministry of education and regulatory agencies responsible for approving such schools.
“Under normal circumstances, we wonder why some of these schools are still surviving. Some of them have endured the test of time, some have been around for more than ten years and they are not approved by government. You cannot remove the place of corruption. Some of the school owners are highly well connected to people in government,” Ibidapo observed.
With poor learning environment, not keeping to standard and employment of unqualified teachers, no doubt, there are consequences for having these unapproved schools around.
Airing her view on the negative implications of having such huge number of illegal schools in Lagos to learning and the total formation of the child, Francis said that in as much as the learning environment may not be so conducive and the quality of teaching and learning may not be so qualitative, these children still get to learn to a large extent, which helps in reducing the rate of out- of- school children in the communities.
“Until such a time when government is able to adequately cater for the education of every Nigerian child, we may have to accommodate these schools. The alternative is for government to ensure that standards are kept in these schools irrespective of the fact that they are low cost,” Francis stated.
For Ibidapo, the negative implications of having such high illegal schools in the state are several and diverse. “For instance, high mortality rate because so many children lose their lives in these unregistered and unapproved schools, because of the unhygienic environment. I think the Itafaji School incident is still very fresh in our memories. Apart from that, you also have compromise of the quality of education.
“Generally, is it not a wonder now that we have graduates who can’t even spell their names correctly, it’s sad but it’s a reality. There’s a compromise in the quality of education. Also, many of these schools also encourage corruption, what you call miracle centres, and special centres. All these happen in the so called private schools, which you won’t be surprised that they are not approved by government.
“All types of child abuses prevail in some of these schools, and then the issue of compromise in the quality of education because you have unqualified teachers and there’s no way you can separate qualified teachers who are passionate about their jobs from high performing students or the achievement of the children in the end.”
The state government said that 80 per cent of child abuse cases are from unapproved schools, what measures should government put in place to curb this?