Abia Govt to relocate students of closed private schools to public

Emelam Udo,Umuahia.

Following the closure of about 197 private Schools few weeks ago in Abia state that failed to meet the required standard minimum standard required by the state, affected pupils/students in such Schools are to relocate to nearby public Schools to continue with their studies.

Okey Kanu,the State Commissioner forInformationandCulture,disclosed this while briefing journalists at Government House on the outcome of this week’s Executive Council meeting chaired by Governor Alex Otti,

Kanu revealed that the Principal/Headmistress/Headmasters where affected pupils/students should not collect fees/levies from such affected pupils/students.

According to Kanu,

“The Ministry of Education is working assiduously to ensure that the pupils of the private schools that were shut down are relocated to nearby schools to continue with their education to ensure that they don’t lose necessary school time as it were , so that is ongoing while the other issues about the closed down schools meeting the guidelines of reopening are being worked upon”

He further informed that 10 JAMB CBT centres that were shut down earlier had been reopened as more would equally be reopened in the New Year.

Kanu  further revealed that the State government was engaging world class experts to drive the reforms in education sector while model schools are currently being retrofitted in various LGAs in the State.

The Information and Culture Commissioner also made it public that the State government has embarked on a total of 26 road projects with six undergoing construction while the other 20 roads were for maintenance and rehabilitations.

He equally informed that government was getting ready for the accreditation of Abia State University Teaching Hospital (ABSU TH) adding that,’ ABSUTH is receiving very rare reviews across board, from within and outside the State and the reasons are very simple; there has been a lot of upgrade in their facilities , they have new faculty members and of course, the general environment of ABSUTH is being improved upon and we believe that at the end of the day, the school will be reaccredited”

Buttressing on the issues of the shut down of some private schools in the State, the Commissioner for Education, Uche Eme Uche (Professor) said, while government appreciated private investors for filling-in the gap in education in the past, a lot of things went wrong with the private schools that were shut down,

“We as a government appreciate what the private proprietors have done in the past, because when government abandoned schools there was a lacuna and private investors took advantage of that but in the process, it was abused policy, that places that were not even fit for poultry farms became schools. So as a responsible government, in collaboration with professional bodies of private schools, we embarked on inspection of all those schools and it was alarming”

She further stated  that ” “There were instances where one teacher taught 3 classes , obviously you would know that such classes don’t have partitions” and emphasized that those who do not have business with schools are not supposed to be running schools.