Lagos State Deputy Governor, Dr Idiat Oluranti Adebule has asserted that primary, secondary and tertiary institutions in the state would soon witness significant and measurable improvement in their quality of physical infrastructure and facilities.
Adebule who supervises the Ministry of Education noted that all levels of education in the state would benefit from aggressive provision of classrooms, laboratories, furniture, and other required amenities for the schools to function properly adding that adequate spread would be ensured especially at the primary and secondary levels.
According to her, the State government has adopted a new school building design for secondary schools in the State to be named “Ibile” School Building that is to address the exponential growth in population which has put immense pressure on schools’ infrastructure thereby creating a huge infrastructural gap.
According to her, “We are not unmindful that majority of the public secondary schools in the State lack essential amenities such as water, electricity and toilet facilities thus the need for the state government to provisioned for them as well as consider safety and friendly environment for learning in Schools”.
Dr Adebule pointed out that the Ibile School Building is a multi-purpose building project that provisioned for 18 classrooms, Art Room, Applied Technology room, Admin and Counselling Office, Mechanical room, Physical Education room, Resource/Special Education room, Restrooms, Science Facilities & Laboratories, Teacher Preparation room, Dining and Home Economic Kitchen, Music room, Languages room, Lobby to showcase trophies and history of the school, Library/Media Centre, Courtyards/Common Areas and Health Services room.
At the primary school level, the Deputy Governor acknowledged the fact that the responsibility for infrastructure and personnel cost is vested in the Federal Government through the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and Local Governments respectively, she reiterated that the State Government is committed to ensuring that the gaps in the infrastructure development in primary education is filled by promptly contributing its own counterpart funding for development in the primary schools.
“Presently there are 1007 Early Child Care/Primary Schools and 506,000 pupils in the State and most of the structures are in very deplorable state. The need to carry out massive rehabilitation cannot be overemphasized. In furtherance of these, the State Government recently contracted the provision of school furniture to the tune of N526m which are been distributed into the schools system.”
While stressing that the process of recruiting 1,300 primary schools teachers into the school system is almost completed. she added that teachers’ professional training and skills development would also be intensified.
In her words, the infrastructural needs of special education schools would also be given priority attention in this fiscal year. The plan is to establish two special schools at Epe and Badagry to complement and improve the capacity of the five existing schools as well as achieve spread and cater for the ever increasing number of special need students.
She however noted that government alone cannot address all the infrastructural needs in the State schools hence the decision to strengthen and intensify the Adopt-a-School programme with a view to furthering the public-private-partnership (PPP) in improving infrastructure in public schools.
To this end, she called on the private sector and respected individuals to support the laudable initiatives of Mr Akinwunmi Ambode in the education sector.
Dr Adebule averred that the State Government recognises the impact of Vocational and Technical education in productivity and economic development of the State and as a result is committed to increase their numbers, review their curriculum and promote effective teaching.
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