The Chairman, Governing Board of the National Senior Secondary Education Commission (NSSEC), Ambassador Nimota Akanbi, has said the board had developed a national policy to bring the country’s senior secondary education subsector at par with its foreign counterparts.
Ambassador Akanbi disclosed this in Abuja at the end of a two-day retreat for members of the governing board of the commission.
She also informed that the board would develop a robust Management Information System (MIS) that will capture relevant data relating to senior secondary schools.
Dr Akanbi said the board is committed to prescribing minimum standards as well as intervene in critical areas of needs of the senior secondary schools across the federation.
She added that the board is also committed to promoting institutional partnerships and collaborations on funding for secondary schools in the country.
According to her, the funding is expected to be with the state governments, private sector, international development partners and donor organisations to improve funding of senior secondary schools in the country.
“We are committed to adopting the Public Private Partnership model in solving some of the existing challenges within senior secondary education sub-sector”, she restated.
She maintained that the board is also committed to deliberately promoting STEAM and TVET across all Senior secondary schools in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, the Executive Secretary of the commission, Professor Benjamin Abakpa, said it had embarked on measures to ensure state governments produce quality teachers in their senior secondary schools.
Abakpa expressed worry over teacher/students ratio in public schools, saying that the commission was receiving collaboration with state governments to solve the problems.
He stated that teachers are the foundation for success and the quality of learning depends on the quality of teachers, stressing that what the board has done is to refresh and train the teachers in the various states
He added that it is starting with the master trainer and with time it will transcend the lower level.
The Executive Secretary disclosed that the commission is set to intervene in critical areas in the state while the deficit would be taken care of once the board has the resources it can have quality teachers.
He also expressed the readiness of the board to monitor the age bracket of students entry into senior secondary schools and also to make them independent and self reliant for white collar jobs after graduation from Senior Secondary Schools.
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