Teachers help students to cheat in exams- proprietress
What are the issues and challenges of running private school?
Following the fall in the standard of public schools in Nigeria, many private schools sprang up to resuscitate education but not all could survive due to cost of management. Running private school is capital intensive and school owners invest heavily on the establishment of school to ensure a high standard. Although, private schools are mostly seen as money-making ventures, not all are really making the money. Since inception of Excellent Kiddies Montessori Academy ten years ago, we haven’t made huge profits. All the money we make is what we use to run the school. School without adequate funding will definitely shut down. So, funding Mrs. Christy Esosa Imudia the proprietress of Excellent Kiddies Montessori Academy, Bwari, Abuja said in this interview some schools covertly assist their students to cheat in exams. is central to the establishment and sustenance of private school. Land acquisition is also a serious problem. The policy says a school should have a sizeable land to run. Most school proprietors buy land from third party (those who have acquired the land) and the price is always high and without Certificate of Occupancy. It’s a big challenge but we have crossed the hurdle. We have acquired about half-hectare land and it had been developed. Another challenge is multi taxation. We have education levy, business premises charges, signboard and mobile advert charges etc. All these, among others, are issues that affect the running of private school.
Most private schools face the challenge of getting adequate and qualified manpower to run school. How do you manage this?
Truly, getting personnel to run a school is a serious challenge. Those who are qualified to teach are few. Some graduates cannot even communicate in English language very well. If we invite about 40 candidates for interviews, we hardly get good five that meet up with standard. A graduate with second class lower or even third class on merit is qualified to teach but many of these graduates don’t get their certificate on merit, they cut corners. Although, the issue of having half-baked graduate does not start from the tertiary institutions, it starts from the foundation – primary and secondary schools. Overtime, the cracks will be widening. What we usually do is to invite many people for interview and select the best ones among them after thorough screening.
Some schools, both public and private, covertly engage in examination malpractice to ensure that their students get good results. This act is not only affecting students’ intellectual development but also produce for the society somebody who is not competent for whatever certificate he’s going to hold. School owners should do all what it takes to prepare their students up to a suitable standard. School cannot handle the challenge alone; parents also have a lot to do in addressing the problem. A number of parents believe that their children cannot pass any external exam without being helped. This is a wrong perception. They should allow them write their exams. Failure