In Govt Junior College, Badagry, 194 students are packed in a class, some sit on bare floor
By Sunday Ani [email protected]” [email protected])
From outside, Government Junior College, Ajara in Badagry Local Government Area of Lagos State, looks every inch a perfect school with an imposing building. A two-storey, L-shaped structure, the building is new and neat; the environment is equally nice with an interlock lined along the pathway that leads into the building. It shares the same premises with the Government Senior College.
But, that is when one assesses the school from outside. A step further into the classrooms brings one face to face with the stark reality of over-crowded classrooms, which has become a regular feature of most public schools in the country. But Government Junior College, Ajara is in a class of its own.
When the reporter visited the school on May 13, 2016, and went round the classes, he discovered that the school has a staggering students’ population. Take this: JSS 1C has a population of 185 students. The number of students in JSS 1C was such that some students were seated on the floor at the front row of the class. In JSS 1E, there are 194 students.
A JSS3 student, who spoke to our reporter equally revealed that in his own class, JSS 3D, they were about 135. From observation, most of the classes hardly have enough space for the teacher to stand and demonstrate, in some cases, to explain his point clearly.
By 8:40 am when our reporter entered into the school premises, students were seen running up and down, shouting on top of their voices while teachers were seated in the staff room, probably, getting ready for the day’s business.
The JSS3 student informed our reporter that the school was that rowdy at that hour of the day because the students were asked to go and get a red biro for the English test, which they were preparing to write that morning. Asked if they had conducted the morning assembly exercise for the day, he said yes but revealed that it was done in various classes as the school had stopped conducting morning assembly in the open since the menace of Boko Haram insurgents increased.
Investigation revealed also that the red biro which the students were asked to procure is a confirmation that the school is actually overpopulated. According to the JSS3 student, they would use the red biro to mark one another’s script, so that the burden of marking so many scripts by the teacher would be drastically reduced. “All that the teacher needs to do is just to supply the answers and we would mark one another’s script and return all to the teacher for recording,” he said.
When a teacher took the reporter to the principal’s office and the reporter told the principal his observation, she insisted that everything was okay in the school. She showed the reporter how expansive and comfortable her office is and stated that she could comfortably host up to 15 parents in the office. While in the principal’s office, about three students were seen serving punishment, a development the principal attributed to disobedience. She told our reporter that students are not allowed to use mobile telephone sets in the school and that the three students that were in her office were serving punishment for being found with handsets.
She told the reporter that the students were comfortable and that the state government is always there to attend to their needs. She was not actually willing to speak to the reporter as she insisted that there was nothing to say regarding the reporter’s observation. She did not want the reporter to waste any more minute inside the school compound as she diplomatically led him out of the gate and came down heavily on the security man at the gate for allowing the reporter to enter the compound without filling the attendance register, considering the fragile security situation in the country occasioned by the activities of the Boko Haram insurgents. She actually ensured that she personally led the reporter out of the school gate, saying that if the reporter wanted her to say anything concerning the school; he should first of all get clearance from the Local Education District (LED) at Agboju, Ori-Ade Local Council Development Authority.
As the principal was leading the reporter out of the school compound, he told her that he had seen students sitting on the floor in some classes, a clear indication that all was not well with the school as she claimed. But, she still tried to explain away the overcrowded situation, saying, “The students you see sitting on the floor could be those who just like to sit on the floor or those who have destroyed their seats. Besides, it is the parents that will not let us rest. They keep disturbing that we give admission to their wards. So, the number is even small compared to the application we receive for admission. So, we should be commended instead because we are helping parents. If we restrict admission to the number you are saying, many parents would suffer. In fact, a number of them may not be able to send their children to school because of lack of space.”
Sensing that the reporter might have recorded the rowdy situation in the school that morning, the principal quickly attributed it to the early morning rain and not necessarily that they were asked to go and get red biros. Although, she admitted that many of them were outside at that time because they wanted to get the red biro, she said they had no excuse for being outside under the pretext of searching for a red biro since they were supposed to have bought it earlier before that day having known they would be writing the English test.
“If you had come when there was no rain, you would have seen what I am saying. A parent came and asked me if there were no children in the school because everywhere was calm,” she said.
However, despite what the reporter witnessed, the principal maintained her position. According to her, the school does not have any problem. She stated that government has been so good to the school and that the school lacks nothing.
She added: “I called the ministry of education and they repaired about 193 seats. The state government recently provided enough furniture for the school. We have a standby generator provided by the state government and a big solar panel also provided by the state government. Every school in Badagry has a solar panel and they are all powered. You see a school like this and you can’t find students running around,” she said.
She also extolled the school saying it was one of the best in Badagry and the best school she has headed as a principal, while directing our reporter to other schools that may have one problem or the other. She insisted that if the school had any problem, it could have been during the tenure of her predecessor because since she assumed office as the principal of the school, the school has been very comfortable in every wise.
However, when the reporter visited the Local Education District 5 at Agboju to find out what the state government is doing to arrest the ugly situation of overcrowded classrooms at the Government Junior College, Ajara, he was told that the only person who could respond to his enquiry was the Tutor-General (TG), who incidentally was not on seat. He was equally advised to write a formal letter requesting to have an audience with the TG before he would be attended to when next he visited.