The National Senior Secondary Education Commission (NSSEC) has trained schedule officers selected from the Federal Unity Colleges and States Senior Secondary Schools on new methods to combat social vices in schools.
Prof. Ekundayo Ocholi, the National President, Association of Professional Counselors in Nigeria (APROCON), emphasised the need for participants to devise new methods of dealing with the vices at a two-day workshop in Abuja on Friday.
The theme of the workshop, organised by NSSEC, titled “Attaining the Sustainable Development Goal 4: Senior Secondary Education in Perspective”
Ocholi said that social vices were eating deep into the senior secondary levels, noting that when trying to combat one, another would emerge.
According to her, the schedule officers in counselling, gender-violence are needed to help fight this menace from schools.
“We are here to give the schedule officers another orientation, change the orientation they had before to combat social vices in our schools especially the quick-money syndrome popularly called ‘yahoo-yahoo’.
“This is making our youths to go into different vices which were not their before. There is need for retraining of these persons on new methods of handling the students so as to repair this country,” she said.
The Lead Resource Person, Prof. Uno Uno, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Federal University of Technology, Minna, said the workshop would advance the knowledge of the schedule officers on research education.
Speaking on the role of laboratory in the teaching and learning of science and mathematics at senior secondary schools, Uno said teaching the students to understand the aspect of doing practicals would prepare them for tertiary education.
“In the university, we have been talking about instrumentation, equipment and laboratories. We must prepare the students to have a place where they can concentrate in the areas of research.
“If we start from the grassroots from pupils in primary schools, students in secondary schools and they have an idea of laboratory and equipment for them to go into research and when they go into the university, there will be a greater result.
Earlier, the Executive Secretary, NSSEC, Dr Iyela Ajayi, said the workshop was one of the Commission’s strategies of enhancing the quality of teaching and learning in schools.
Ajayi said the workshop was apt considering the challenges bedeviling the sub-sector.
According to him, there is need to provide intervention to schools especially in the areas of infrastructure, equipment and capacity development of the personnel.
He charged participants to equip themselves with new insights and strategies that would help elevate the quality of teaching and learning in the schools. (NAN)
