Don frowns on malpractice, seeks training for teachers

A University of Lagos lecturer, Prof. Akachi Ezeigbo, has decried the quality of education at the primary and secondary school levels in the country.

This came as she called for refresher courses for teachers, particularly English teachers.

According to her, many Nigerian pupils cannot organise their ideas logically and correctly in the English Language.

She spoke in Lagos during the Bishop Mike Okonkwo 15th annual lecture, where a Lagos public school pupil, Patience Brown, emerged the overall best in an essay competition.

Brown is a pupil of Apapa Senior High School, Apapa.

Ezeigbo, the chief examiner in the competition, noted that pupils who could not write the English Language well would likely not do well in other subjects.

Citing the essay competition, she stated that the quality of the articles submitted by the pupils was retrogressing every year.

She said, “The submissions for this year’s competition show a further slide down the curve of suitability. We were only able to get four out of the over 2,000 entries received. This shows a decline relative to last year’s in which we managed to get just five testable entries.”

The academic, who urged pupils to take their studies seriously, noted that many of them engage in examination malpractice.

She added, “Many of the entries in this year’s competition were completely useless because they did not address the issues in focus. In many others, we detected brazen collaboration among pupils from the same school.

“We suspect that they received help from their teachers. In some cases, about five to 10 pupils of the same school submitted verbatim entries. Some entries show obvious cases of parents helping their children because the language use did not reflect the capacities of children of secondary school age.

“In other cases, we found evidence of pupils hacking sections of their entries from the Internet, textbooks, newspapers and other sources. And because many went to the same sites or sources, it was easy to detect this brazen form of cheating.”

Ezeigbo, who chided teachers for some of the lapses in the sector, urged the government to endeavour to organise refresher courses for them.

According to her, many teachers of the English Language in the nation’s primary and secondary schools lack proper training to teach the subject.

Meanwhile, Precious Nwaigwe of the St. Francis Catholic secondary School, Idimu, Lagos came second in the competition, while Akinwande Akinboluwarin of the Greater Tomorrow International School, Arigidi Akoko, Ondo State, came third.

The consolation prize went to David Oluwasoromidayo of the Roshhalom International Secondary School.