A call has gone to school proprietors to ensure proper assessment of teachers before embarking on their employment.
Elder Udechukwu U. S., the proprietor of Life Education Centre, Oginigba, gave the advice while in a chat with the journalists during the world NAPPS day celebration at Rumuola Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State.
Elder Udechukwu who operates both nursery, primary and secondary schools, disclosed that most school owners do not embark on proper assessment of teachers before employing them, but were only after the certificates they acquired.
He emphasized that there is need to do proper assessment beyond presentation of certificates because schools build the nation.
Emphasis on quality education, he said, would go a long way to improve education in to a high standard in the federation as well as compete favourably with the rest of the world.
Elder Udechukwu further revealed that the proprietors in private schools are facing problems of multiple taxation and that it should not be so.
According to him, “I am not saying that the private schools should not pay taxes. We are meant to pay taxes, but what worries me most is the imposition of taxes on private schools in different forms”, he added.
Commenting on the challenges facing his school, Life Education Centre, the proprietor who disclosed that the school was established on September 13, 1999, noted that there is no organization without challenges.
He said the school has financial challenges, adding that none payment of school fees by some parents was another challenge facing the school.
According to him, as a Christian school, the school fees are very affordable, as “The Lord spoke to us in 2007 to help parents. We followed it up and decided to give partial scholarship to students after sharing the ministration with the school management”.
Elder Udechukwu who further disclosed that other challenges faced by the school was lack of proper trained teachers, because the school has some graduates who graduated from the university NCE B.Ed who passed out from college of education with good certificates but were not able to teach because of lack of proper training stressing that his school train them in order to be good teachers.
The proprietor who noted that most schools in the federation employed teachers based on the certificate mentality which has created a lot of problems for the nation, leading to poor standard in education as well as examination malpractices.
He advocated that the teaching profession should be given due attention because it is a nation builder, a production industry which produces other professions like lawyers, doctors, engineers, journalists, among others.
He called on the federal government to go back to the drawing board to help the future generation by bringing backTeachersTrainingCollege, TTC, which would go a long way in training quality teachers. ###
Emeka Jilly Ejiowhor
