Public schools: Tell me the truth, Zulum begs at meeting with 84 school principals ...Says ‘No entrance exam, no JSS 1’

Borno State Governor Babagana Umara Zulum, at the Government House in Maiduguri on Sunday, hosted 84 principals of all public secondary schools in the state.

The governor told the principals to be honest in telling him the realities of the challenges facing the public school system rather than cover up for fear of victimization.

Zulum, a university professor himself, said he wanted to get firsthand information from the principals on the problems facing public secondary schools in the state.

“I have been to several schools and each time I asked, some of you, principals, found it difficult to explain the problems in your schools. I was later made to understand that if you tell me the truth, you would either be transferred somewhere you wouldn’t like or somehow victimized. Please, I beg all of you to tell me the truth. Let us tell ourselves the truth so that we can improve Borno’s public school education from where we are now. I am pleading with you to, please, be upright, be honest.

“Education is the bedrock of any development. Without a functional educational system, we shall continue to experience this Boko Haram insurgency in Borno. Look at the kind of students we are graduating from our public secondary schools, most of them do not qualify for university admission, even those who get admitted find it very difficult to cope. I assure you that telling me the truth will not lead to anything happening to any of you by God’s grace,” Zulum told the principals.

The governor reminded the principals of the glorious days and emphasised the need for all stakeholders to regain quality in the public school system.

He stated: “I can recall that twenty years ago, principals were not willing to even become permanent secretaries because of job satisfaction. Today, that satisfaction is no longer there. There is general decline in the standard of education in public institutions all over the country. There is the lack of qualified teachers, inadequate teaching facilities, poor maintenance culture, general decay of infrastructure, government’s inability to ensure monitoring and evaluation, centralized control by the ministry, unnecessary bureaucracy and irregular training and retraining of teachers and other essential staff, poor data management and indiscipline, among other major problems affecting the public school system”.

Governor Zulum assured that his administration would continue to put measures in place to improve the training and welfare of teachers and administrators of public schools with a view to encouraging high performance! while supervision would be drastically changed for the purpose of punishing those not ready to change.