Sub-standard schools, Ebonyi State Government Shutdown 337 schools

The Ebonyi Government says it has closed 337 illegal and sub-standard schools across the 13 Local Government Areas in the state.

The state’s Commissioner for Education, Mr Ndubuisi Agbo, made the disclosure in an interview with journalists on Tuesday in Abakaliki.

He said that the affected schools were identified by a high-powered 10-man committee set up in each of the Local Government Areas to locate sub-standard schools.

“The closure of the schools is necessary in order to purge the education system of illegality and raise the standard of education in the state,” he said.

According to him, government will no longer accept an unregulated system of education.

“Any school that must be established in the state should have a block of six classrooms, library, examination hall, laboratory, offices and recreational facilities.

“The exercise is not intended to witch-hunt anybody in the state but to sanitise the sector for a better tomorrow.

“It is expected that at the end of the exercise, not even a single illegal school will exist in the state and that is why we have taken it to the grassroots.

“We are not doing that because we want to witch-hunt or victimise anybody; if we succeed in doing this, we would have reduced the level of examination malpractices by 50 per cent.

According to him, a situation where the sector will not be regulated or organised is unacceptable

“So all we are doing is to make sure that we bequeath a system that is very solid for generations yet unborn.

He said that Gov. Martins Elechi believed in quality and that was why there was embargo on the establishment of public schools.

“This administration has not established any new school, rather we are channelling all our resources to attain the desired quality,” he said.

Agbo said that coded identification cards were introduced in schools across the state to curb urban-rural migration among students, especially during examinations.

He urged school principals to ensure that their schools keyed into the project as it had been designed to rid schools of “fake students”. (NAN)