The Abia State Commissioner for Education, Dr. Kanelechi Nwangwa, on Monday disclosed that plans were underway to introduce central promotion examination for schools in the state.
The Commissioner made this known while briefing newsmen in his office in Umuahia, on the plans and programmes of the ministry for the year 2020.
He said that the ministry had put a system in place to ensure that efforts made to enhance the standard and quality of education in Abia succeeded.
He said that the central promotion examination would be conducted at the end of every school year to ascertain that the right people were promoted to the next class.
Nwangwa noted that the state government was determined to ensure that students received wholesome education that would meet cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning needs.
His words: “Our penchant for getting a child’s schoolwork marked good, regardless of his poor academic ability, has caused a serious problem.
“We want to change that orientation. This is because there is a difference between going to school and being educated.”
He decried the spate of mass promotion of students into new classes, saying that it had made students to take education for granted.
The commissioner said that the new system would therefore encourage students to take their studies seriously and also make teachers not to “rest on their oars”.
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He said that a general database on the performance of students in each school would be created thereby ensuring that only students that passed the examination moved to the new class.
Speaking further, Nwangwa said that the ministry had begun closing substandard schools and would not relent until sanity was restored in the education sector in the state.
“We went round and discovered that the issue of establishment of schools has become all comers affair, and schools in shanties and makeshift are most guilty of providing substandard education.
“There is a minimum standard and requirement for establishing schools in Abia. So everyone must follow due process in setting up a school in the state.
“We will ensure that there is adequate supervision of the operations of schools that have been pronounced as standard schools,” he said.
