By Stanley Onyekwere
The FCT Administration has threatened to shut down any school that fails to provide the necessary information required in building a credible data base required in assessing the health status of the education system.
The Permanent Secretary of the FCTA, Mr. Olusade Adesola, sounded the warning during the official flaging-off the 2020/2021 FCT Annual School Census (ASC) for all basic and post basic schools in the six Area Councils of Abuja, the nation’s capital city.
Represented at the event by the Director of the FCT Secondary Education Board, Mrs. Lanre Emeje, the Permanent Secretary also threatened to sanction school proprietors and administrators who default in the data collation process.
He noted that the continuous influx of people into the nation’s capital puts enormous pressure on infrastructure, including educational facilities.
According to him, the population growth, has resulted in increased enrolment in schools and the need for additional schools and expansion infrastructure in existing ones.
He said: “I wish to also commend the private sector participation in the provision of education services to the residence of FCT. You have keyed into the slogan “Education for all is the responsibility of all.
“However, in as much as we appreciate your contributions, we need to know the status, level and quality of the education you are providing. Participation in the Annual School Census is one of the means of providing us with the data on such information, which in turn will pave way for any intervention.
“I enjoin all stake holders to take the conduct of the 2020/2021 ASC seriously through diligent participation by providing accurate, reliable and timely data required. Appropriate sanctions including shutting down of any school will be enforced for any school that fails to comply. School heads, Principals and Proprietors will be held accountable for failure to participate.”
On his part, the Secretary for Education, Sani Dahir El-Katuzu, said aside providing reliable and timely data of all schools to ensure proper planning, the Annual School Census will also provide an opportunity to evaluate the performance of the school system towards effective management of education in FCT and in Nigeria at large.
The Secretary however lamented that accurate data for education planning and decision making has been a major concern of the government and this has also created difficulties for development partners to make interventions in certain areas.
He also regretted that some principals and head teachers of public and private schools have shown care-free attitude to data collection with many failing to make timely remittance of returns.
“This problem of data quality is even worsened by the increasing number of schools that may not be included in government figures such as unregistered private schools and religious schools that may be teaching some secular subjects, thus resulting in large figures of out of school children as recorded for Nigeria by International Development Partners (IDPs)”, he stressed.
He therefore advised that all hands must be on deck in the conduct of the 2020/2021 ASC in ICT to ensure that credible, reliable and usable data is provided for effective planning, research purposes and sound decision making.
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