WAEC: Proprietress Blames Students Poor Performance on Teachers’ Supervision

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

The Proprietress of Solid Fundamentals Montessori Academy, Abuja, Mrs. Mmayen Obaigbona has blamed the poor performance of students in West African Examination Council (WAEC) on the lack of supervision of teachers, especially those in public schools.

Obaigbona disclosed this, recently, at the graduation ceremony for the class of 2018 of the school, said though government schools have more facilities than their private counterparts and also employ the best of staff, but they are lacking in supervision.

According to her, “Even if you supervise a dull child, you can turn that person to a gifted child. So, I think it’s lack of supervision. They don’t follow up their staff and people who work for government don’t really care. It is like national cake, they do it the way they like. It is not the same in private schools because we follow you up and make sure that you do your work. People bring their children to private schools because they know people who are there, they know people who will give account of the performance of their children.

“With much supervision, students will do well. Although it is declining, we know how to handle it to come out well. We just have to supervise our staff, our students and this supervision is not one sided, it has to do with the parents- parents/teachers relationship. When you follow up on a child and you discovered there is a problem, you get in touch with the parents, so that whatever you do, the parents will follow up, it is everybody’s work.”

Obaigbona stressed that the school started in the year 2000, with the nursery and primary section in New Karu, Nassarawa state, while the secondary school started six years after.

“For the secondary school, this is the 7th set that we have graduated. For this year, we graduated 43 secondary school students. At the primary level, we graduated 30 and the nursery we graduated about 40.”

On the school’s challenges, the proprietress said bringing up teenagers is not an easy task, while also lamenting that the present economic situation is affecting the school, as the parents now struggle to pay the tuition fees of their children.

“We in private schools are just struggling alone, yet we bring out the best students making Nigeria proud outside this country. We will want government to give us teaching aids, even if it is one or two staff send them to school and pay salary, then we can carry on with others. Once in a while, they should organise training for teachers in private schools because most of their children are in private schools, they can give us resource materials, so that we will know that our government is encouraging us. We pay a lot of money to the government to operate every year.”

The best graduating student of the school, Master Favour Ileogben, 16, thanked his teachers and parents for their important roles in achieving the success.

Ileogben who scored scored 241 in UTME, intends to study Architect at Ahamadu Bello University, Zara.

The Head Girl, Sarah Akumun, thanked God for seeing her through and the teachers for putting her through academically, adding that the school teaches morals and has good science and boarding facility.