IT IS AN OFFENCE NOT TO SEND A CHILD TO SCHOOL

Bothered by the rate of out-of-school children, it is an offence not to send a child to school in our country, stakeholders have stated that one of the measures to reduce the downward trend is to initiate and pass a bill that would; punish any parent who fails to sent his child to school.

They noted that the initiative would also reduce the rate at which couples give birth, thereby control our population explosion.

Nigeria population for 2050 is projected at 411 million.

According to the United Nations, by 2050 (medium variant), India will have; 1.73 billion people, China 1.46 billion, Nigeria 411 million, United States 398 million, Indonesia 327 million, Pakistan 309 million, Bangladesh 265.8 million, Brazil 232 million, Democratic Republic of Congo 195.3 million, Ethiopia 188.5 million and Mexico 164 million.

Speaking in this regards, Director of Greensprings School, Mrs Lai Koiki said; that to actualise the vision of compulsory education for Nigerian citizenry, it is an offence our government should; put in place laws that control birth rate.

Greensprings
She said: ‘’We need to get to a point in our country where it is an offence not to send a child to school. ‘’You just don’t leave people to freelance, they need to be educated on birth control.

”When we were younger, we had these family planning organizations and centres advocating that taught people on how to space their children. ”Our government should bring it back, it is a global phenomena.

‘’China, at a time was; very strict with their population control, making a law that a family should have just one child. ‘’If you par chance have the other child, then you start paying the State.

When I looked at the political campaign rallies and see sea of heads, I get scared, asking where are these people from.

Koiki who maintained that the bane of our problems are not corruption, insecurity but education, adding that; without education, we will not make any headway.

She said: ‘’Before you talk about economy, education is the first thing that needs to be fixed, if we don’t fix it, then we are really going no where economically.

Asked if building more schools is solutions to the backlog of students seeking for admission yearly without success, she posited that we don’t really need to build more universities, stressing that what we need to increase the carrying capacity, ensure enough teachers are on ground and good policies that will ensure that all these children are in school to learn.

She said: ‘’The solution is not just putting them in school, we must ensure they learn.

‘’The only way you can ensure they are learning is to ensure that those teachers have been; trained and ready to take on the challenges involved.

‘’Other area our government should look into is funding of education. It is through adequate funding that teachers can be trained.’’IT IS AN OFFENCE for a child to stay at home

Making a case for recruitment of more teachers to drive the teaching profession, she urged the government to explore the corps member serving in the various states.

She said: ‘’Granted that we have the National Youth Service Corps that can be trained for maybe six weeks to go into schools in the first instance, so that at least there can be; ready made teachers while they are pulling out more teachers for further training to stand in.

‘Teaching for Nigerians’ is presently doing something like that which has been successful.

They are pulling out the best graduates from all over the world that are sacrificing their lives to teach in the public schools for two years. In doing that, they are trained for about six months to help in the teacher training agenda.’’

Speaking in the same vein, the Deputy Director of Education, Greensprings School, Dr. Barney Wilson stressed the need of preparing children for strategically thinking.

According to him, one of his main objectives in the school is to prepare students to think strategically. ‘’The world needs graduates who are thinkers,’’ he said.

His words: ‘’Our world needs people who have expertise in thinking, solving problems and looking for solutions that are different. ‘’We want to go beyond learning, so that students will be able to apply what they are learning.

we want to go deeper into practise.’’ The above discussion took place during a media parley held at Greensprings School, Anthony campus, Lagos.