Some parents on Saturday said that, school proprietors and books publishers are more dangerous than the subsisting bandits that daily terrorise the Nigerian society.
The disenchanted parents, who decried the exploitation of private schools proprietors, said the laision of the school owners and the book publishers has commercialised education in Nigeria.
The parents, who attended the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) meeting of Bloom Felid School, Muwo Ojo, Lagos; on Saturday in Lagos State, said that education regulatory bodies should be alive to their responsibilities.
A parent, Mr Godfrey Ibe, said that the subsisting method where a child or pupil could not make use of test books used by his or her elderly ones promoted to higher classes was exploitative and should be halted by regulators.
“We are pushed to enroll our children into private schools because of perceived inconsistencies and lackluster attitudes of staffs of public schools that contributions to low performance of pupils in external examinations.
“We equally believe that the regulatory bodies should have certain measure of control on private schools proprietors to ensure things are done right.
“Do not be deceived, education is still under social services and should not be commercialised because of the effect it will have on entire society,” he said.
Mrs Elisabeth Adeola, another parent, said that the idea of not allowing pupils to make use of books use by their senior ones was the arrangement of proprietors and the publishers to milk parents dry.
“The idea of doing assignments inside textbooks was conceptualise to render such books useless for potential future user, with little or no difference from subsequent ones to buy for the next section for a child of same parent going for that class,” she said.
Adeola, who decried the pressure on parents to purchase new books for every session, said that parents found it difficulty to cope.
According to her the low performance of pupils can be attributed to non availability of learning materials to aid learning making most pupils to go to school without textbooks to study.
“Growing up in those school days, we used to collect textbooks from our Senior ones and I could remember I didn’t buy any textbook but I made use of the ones I collected from my brothers.
” But today, textbooks are designed for primary and secondary school pupils in such a way that the junior ones can’t make use of the books of their senior ones when they move to the next class.
“Class works and Home works are now written inside the textbook pages. Government regulatory bodies, and curriculum formulators must look into this.
“Parents are now at the mercy of Book publishers and School proprietors, this is a sad situation that should be stopped to revive the education sector,” she said.
Responding, Mrs Angela Imaagbodike, the proprietoress of the school, who pleaded with parents over the textbooks changing issue every section, said the schools were following directives from the ministry of education.
She said that publishers could not published books base on individual schools demand but publish in accordance with the requirement of the curriculum.
