Gov Makinde-led Administration Has Improve Quality Of Education In Oyo State – SUBEB Chairman

*To embark on massive construction, renovation of classrooms, procurement of furniture

By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan

The Executive Chairman of the Oyo State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Dr Nureni Adeniran, on Wednesday, disclosed that the
the Governor Seyi Makinde led administration has been able to improve the quality of education in the state.

Dr Adeniran who said this while featuring on the Omituntun 2.0 Inter-Ministerial Briefing held at the Governor’s Office Briefing Room, Secretariat, Agodi, Ibadan.stressed that the policies of the Governor Makinde-led administration in the basic education sector have helped to greatly reduce infrastructure deficit and improved the quality of education in the state covering primary and junior secondary schools,

The SUBEB Executive Chairman pointed out that the administration has been able to improve the quality of education through the massive training of teaching and non-teaching staff members, recruitment of thousands of teachers, construction/renovation of classrooms and procurement of school furniture, among others.

Dr Adeniran stressed that the governor started the task of repositioning the basic education sector in the state in 2019, and that in his first four years of office, the government promptly paid UBEC counterpart funds for 2019, 2020 and 2021, which enabled SUBEB to embark on different physical and human development programmes, which uplifted the basic education sector in the state”.

” When Engr. Makinde became the governor, we were talking about the infrastructure deficit in education. So, we all agreed that we had to deal with it. The governor is of the opinion that the peanuts that we pay as cash-off funds are not going anywhere”, he said.

Dr Adeniran added, ” I have mentioned all the schools that SUBEB did. If you provide a book of the schools we have done, you say, ah, this governor has tried. But if you go out and see some dilapidated structures, you will say, what is this governor doing? When you consider the number I have given and if you remember that we have 2,506 schools, then it is an issue that will continue to recur”.

“In the real sense of it, we have done very well, because if other governments have been fixing this number of schools, the situation would have changed.If you want to look at the pace of the UBEC/ SUBEB, it won’t go anywhere. So, at the end of the day, our government decided to take a decisive step and that was the reason the government established the office of the Special Adviser on Education Intervention, which is saddled with special intervention in education. AT UBEC/SUBEB, we will also continue with our own regular interventions”.

He stressed, ” At present, a lot of work is going on in the area of special intervention. Before you know it, a lot of things are going to be fixed, because the government intends to approve N10 billion on a yearly basis for special intervention on education infrastructure. If that is done on a yearly basis, by 2027, we would have had a successful result.”

” There is no gain-saying that the vision of the Governor Seyi Makinde administration on the Basic Education sub-sector to have a very negligible number of out-of-school children in the state, is gaining momentum on a daily basis,”

Dr Adeniran maintained that the state government has also ” graciously paid the counterpart funds for 2022 and 2023 to complement the released matching grants from the Federal Government through UBEC for the two years, which amounted to the sum of Two Billion, Six Hundred Million, Two Hundred Thirty-Seven thousand, Three Hundred and Fourteen Naira, Twenty-Nine Kobo (N2,600,237,314.29) only.”

The SUBEB Executive Chairman noted that the Board has got approval to execute projects in public basic schools across the 33 Local Government Areas of the state, including construction of 41 blocks of classrooms, seven perimeter fences, 30 boreholes, procurement of 5,828 pupils’ desks and benches, 473 teachers’ tables and chairs, 910 sports equipment as well as the renovation of 60 blocks of classrooms.

He stated that improvement in quality resulted in increased school enrolment, with thousands of parents even withdrawing their wards from private schools to enrol them in public schools in the state and that apart from the SUBEB interventions, the state would also embark on another massive construction/renovation of classrooms through a reward fund it got for its involvement in the Better Education Service Delivery for All (BESDA) Programme, which sought to reduce out-of-school children.

The SUBEB Chairman while lauding the Gov Makinde administration’s effort in the area of reducing the number of out-of-school children in the state, hinted that about 60,000 out-of-school-children have been returned to the classrooms.

“All the states that benefited in the BESDA Programme were rewarded with funds and His Excellency, the Executive Governor, Engr. Seyi Makinde , decided and insisted that the reward should be utilised for the provision of infrastructure in public primary schools in the state.
To this end, the Board has rolled out infrastructural projects which will soon be executed in the public primary schools in all the thirty-three (33) Local Government Areas of the State and this will go a long way to improve both infrastructure and academic activities of these benefiting schools.”

Speaking further, he said the Board conducted training programmes for 13,859 teaching and non-teaching staff members, constructed 289 blocks of classrooms, 60 model schools and renovated another 229 classrooms, while it also procured 22,962 desks and benches, 1,189 teachers’ furniture, sank 138 boreholes and also procured 33 motorcycles, 30 desktop computers and 33 digital tablets, among other efforts.

Dr Adeniran also noted that the administration recruited 5,600 teachers and 80 caregivers to address the shortage of teachers in the 2,508 public primary schools in the state, adding, “I wish to reiterate that the recruitment has gone a long way to improve the learning outcome in all the public primary schools across the state through academic performances and other extra-curricular activities.”

He said the recruitment of new teachers has led to improved standard of education, saying “the situation is changing because we have newly-recruited teachers that have better orientation, that dress very well, that are more accustomed to the digital world, and so on and so forth.” and that the government has also introduced different policies to improve teaching and learning, training and capacity-building for teachers and other sorts of training.