Education: Our Message To Osun Parents And Guardians

Dear Osun Parents and Guardians,

Should we be expecting the Osun State Government to sponsor the 2017 WAEC (May/June) of the government-owned Schools’ Students in Osun State???

We write this message consequent to the position we occupy in savaging the Educational System of Osun State as a committed Nongovernmental Organisation, but our huge efforts become and even rendered less effective as a result of additional challenges surfacing in Osun Educational System which our findings had established your huge contributions to.

At first, we commend the efforts of the present and past governments of Osun State in the area of State Sponsorship of WAEC of students in state-owned High Schools. As you would agree with us that for the past 3 years, the state government is being finding it uneasy to pay the West African Examination Council (WAEC) the examination costs of the state students. In the year 2015, WAEC shut the door of checking WAEC (May/June) Results on Osun State-owned Schools’ Students as a result of the state government inability to pay the body.

Despite that challenge, the Osun Parents/Guardians were in high expectation of the same government to sponsor the 2016 WAEC (May/June) of all state-owned Schools’ Students, before the State Government tactically introduced Qualifying Examination towards reducing the number of students to sponsor. The conduct of the unplanned Qualifying Examination was an evidence for every sound mind that the state government was not interested in testing the readiness of the students to face and conquer WAEC, but looking for the means of reducing the number of students to sponsor for the 2016 WAEC May/June.

At the wee hours of the closing of the 2016 WAEC (May/June) Forms, the state government released the results of its Qualifying Examination and asserted that it would not sponsor the WAEC of every student who failed the Examination. The affected students’ parents were therefore advised to effect the payment of their wards’ 2016 WAEC (May/June) Forms within a week, before it was later extended to 2 weeks by WAEC.

In Ilesa High School alone, close to 600 students were unable to write 2016 WAEC (May/June) consequent to their parents’ inability to make the payment, which was as a result of the lateness in the state government communications of its withdrawal to sponsor them. Thousands of such students, across the state, were sent out of schools as a response to the State Ministry of Education’s orders that: any student who could not pay for the 2016 WAEC (May/June) should be sent out of the schools. These students were sent out of schools without a Testimonial to show as an evidence of their secondary schools’ attendance.

One would be tempted to say ‘Congratulations!!!’ to those students who were sponsored by the state government and those whose parents sponsored, but wait a minute! Are we all aware that WAEC has again, this year (2016), blocked its site against all Osun state-owned Schools’ Students towards checking their results, consequent to the same reason that the State Government is yet to pay the body for the just concluded 2016 WAEC (May/june)? At this time, those students whose parents paid for their WAEC are not left out in this ugly scenario.

Some of us might be aware that some students of government-owned schools in the state were so lucky to have checked and printed their results before WAEC woke up of its deep sleep to blocking the site. At the same time, one would be tempted to say ‘Congratulations!!!’ to such students, until one hears that WAEC has written to all Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria not to consider 2016 WAEC (May/June) Results of the Osun State government-owned schools brought to their schools for admission. We have a reported case of an Osun student who was told this during the Post UTME Screening Exercise of the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA).

The saddest part of it is that Osun Parents and Guardians are still expecting this same government to pay for the 2017 WAEC (May/June) of their wards, despite all these challenges. The prospective Senior School 3 (SSS 3) Students are awaiting their fate of the results of the Qualifying Examination done by the state government prior to this vacation, to determine those who would get promoted to SSS 3 and thereafter enjoy the questionable ‘WAEC sponsorship’.

As a government surrounded and waited to be bullied by the Oppositions, we know that it would be highly difficult for the State Government to come out and declare its INCAPABILITY to continue with the state sponsorship of the government-owned schools’ students’ WAEC, consequent to the fact that this program ‘WAEC SPONSORSHIP’ was introduced by the previous PDP Government and that the PDPs might use it against the ruling party. But, isn’t it reasonable and logical for the Parents/Guardians to help the government out of the anticipated embarrassment by simply ask it to stop the WAEC Sponsorship for the sake of the future of our timid promising government-owned secondary schools’ students.

We expect to hear the voice of the state’s Parents Teachers Association (PTA) in a peaceful request of ‘Drop WAEC Sponsorship for We Parents!!!’

Through our findings, it has been established that the state sponsorship of WAEC by this administration has done more evil to our educational system than good. A situation where all the state-owned schools lack basic stationeries and manpower to take the state education to a better position among its peers in the country. The sponsorship of WAEC by the state government has always been a WASTE as statistics have shown that less than 30% of the sponsored students made 5 Credits in the Examination. How would they perform in WAEC and other Examinations with the present conditions in our state’s education and the caliber of unmotivated and/or unskilled teachers we have?

Let us say NO to Osun State’s continuation of WAEC SPONSORSHIP.

This is just a sincere advice from us, consequent our Findings…

Do we have any other findings/facts in our archive as regards the State Education and the contributions of Government, Parents/Guardians and the so called ‘Education Consults’ towards the Doom of our darling State?

Is there anything we can all do to take our State out of the National Embarrassing Position it occupies in terms of Education?

Kindly keep following us…

You can post your comments on our website (www.iserh.org) or simply send it to our email: info@iserh.org.
Osun A Dara O!!!