HOW PRINCIPALS IN COLLABORATION WITH GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS ENGAGE IN DESTROYING SECONDARY EDUCATION IN DELTA STATE
It is said that education is the key to success or victory. But with what is presently happening in the secondary schools in Delta State, it seems the saying does not hold sway any longer. ZN investigation reliably confirmed it.
Our visits to many secondary schools in Delta State revealed that School Principals have turned their individual schools into money making entity.
Sources authoritatively confirmed to ZN investigation team that school Principals pay nothing less than one million naira to Post Primary Education Board high braced officers to be able to get a school to head. Ones that is done they start extorting students to be able to recoup all they have spent to secure the principalship as well as make profits for themselves.
A principal that spoke to ZN, who did not want his names to appear in the print confirmed the story by saying that Principals use students to get back money spent on PPEB top echelons through different secret levies imposed on them.
For instance, in Government Model Secondary School, Asaba, for students who were admitted during the 2023 academic resumption year, the sum of N55,000 was collected from them, while in Unity Secondary School, the sum of N46,000 was collected from the new intake. Other schools visited in the State, the money collected from the new intake was not different. The gory aspect of it is that students sit on ordinary floors to receive lectures under the leaking roofs where they are accommodated in over congested classes of at least one hundred students in a class.
Same reliable sources told ZN, that last year the official WAEC fee was N26,000 for each internal student. But the Principals and the schools’ Examination Officers collaborated to collect N42,000 secretly from each of the students sitting for the examination, while the external students paid N60,000.
Further findings from sources revealed that apart from the over blotted WAEC collections, the students were forced to pay what they called WAEC Examination Malpractices Fee. The fee was between N5,000 and N15,000. For instance, students in Osadenis paid N5,000 each, Okpanam High School, N15,000, Isioma Onyeobi, N7,000, so other schools in the State. According to our reliable sources, the money was said to be used in bribing WAEC Examiners in order to allow the students cheat.
Thus, this development has shown that the Principals were not interested in making the students leaders of tomorrow.
During our investigations, it was also revealed that some schools were overstaffed, while some were seriously short of staffs especially on the core subjects.
Further investigations authoritatively confirmed that in some schools some teachers have been there for more than ten years without going on transfer. Whenever they were transferred they work their ways back to same schools or nearby schools that were a stone through to the former.
It was also discovered that some teachers do not come to school because they are given covers by some of the school Principals, while some are in the habit of attending, sign the attendance register, spend one or two hours, before leaving the school compound.
It is important the State government should investigate these anomaly and bring those involved to books to serve as deterrent to others. This rotten behaviour has been in vogue in the Delta State educational sector for many years. Same is ongoing in other government establishment.
What baffled the eyes is that the education monitoring teams are not helping matters as they are supporting the bad act by receiving gratification from the school Principals whenever they visited the schools.
It is also important that the government should find a way of protecting hard working teachers from attack from brutal students’ parents who challenge teachers whenever their wards were disciplined for misconducts.
However, investigations stated that most parents who summon courage to challenge the teachers mostly have relations in the government or political circle that back them up.
