Skip to main content

FG TO BAN PTA MEETING

THE Federal Government recently said that it would soon pro- scribe the National Parents Teachers Association (PTA) of Federal Government Colleges. However, government says it will allow only PTAs within the unity schools to continue to function in view of the crucial roles they play. The Minister of State for Education, Prof. Anthony Anwuka, who made the pronouncement during a parley with journalists in Abuja, explained that the move was necessitated by the bickering between the Unity Schools and the national PTA body.

Anwuka also explained that the PTAs evolved in Federal Government Colleges because parents had on their own decided to form the PTA meeting in order to raise funds to augment the funding by the Federal Government to the unity schools and stressed that they were doing well, electing their own officers and helping to run these schools.

The minister also said that the emergence of the national PTA and their intention to impose supremacy on the local PTAs is the cause of the crisis. He implored them to allow peace to reign and leave the system to run the way it has been running without any meddlesomeness.

It is commendable that government has expressed worries over the excesses of the national PTA and threatened to ban it if the members did not desist from their undue interference in the running of these schools. But we think that outright banning of the organization may not be the right step to take as it may prove to be counter productive in the end.

Beyond the ban, we urge the government to investigate why the national PTA has suddenly be- come unruly and overbearing in the conduct of its affairs.

After the investigation, government can then determine whether the ban is the best approach to solve the problem or not. We think that ban does not always solve a problem of this nature. In- stead of the ban, government can reform the national PTA in such a way that it will not constitute a problem in the running of the unity schools again.

Apart from the fact that the country’s constitution guaranteed the right to freedom of association, which also applies to the PTA, we think that the PTA might have served many useful purposes before the crisis of confidence set in.

In an era of inadequate funding for schools by the government, the PTAs from which the national PTA emerged, have come in to fill some missing funding gaps. Besides contributing to infrastructure development of these schools, the PTAs have also helped with the recruitment of some teachers in key subject areas like English, Mathematics and Sciences, and other vital logistics in these schools.

Unfortunately, the leadership of some of these local PTAs has be- come the exclusive preserve of a select few, especially those the school authorities prefer, while excluding others from the inner workings of the associations. We believe that the local PTAs as well need urgent reforms in order to remain focused and relevant in unity schools.

There is need to ensure that all parents and teachers are fully involved in the running of the lo- cal PTAs and show more interest in their operations. The present practice where some of these bodies are allowed to run for years without having their accounts audited and vetted is not healthy. And due to the undemocratic nature of the running of some of these local PTAs, some parents have decided to stay away from their meetings.

There is no doubt that the problem of the national PTA is a manifestation of the ills from the lo- cal PTAs. These are some of the issues the government would take into consideration in resolving the current crisis.

We do not believe that banning the national PTA is the needed solution to the problem at hand. The problem in our education system, especially at primary and secondary levels, needs the input of parents and teachers for it to be overcome. Therefore, government and the PTAs should work as a team to solve it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Sphere

Photograph by Elena Saavedra Buckley. Once when I was about twelve I was walking down the dead-end road in Albuquerque where I grew up, around twilight with a friend. Far beyond the end of the road was a mountain range, and at that time of evening it flattened into a matte indigo wash, like a mural. While kicking down the asphalt we saw a small bright light appear at the top of the peaks, near where we knew radio towers to occasionally emit flashes of red. But this glare, blinding and colorless, grew at an alarming rate. It looked like a single floodlight and then a tight swarm beginning to leak over the edge of the summit. My friend and I became frightened, and as the light poured from the crest, our murmurs turned into screams. We stood there, clutching our heads, screaming. I knew this was the thing that was going to come and get me. It was finally going to show me the horrifying wiring that lay just behind the visible universe and that was inside of me too. And then, a couple se...
Post a Comment
Read more

DEMOCRACY DAY SPEECH BY PMB; MAY 29 2016

www.naijaloaded.com My compatriots, It is one year today since our administration came into office. It has been a year of triumph, consolidation, pains and achievements. By age, instinct and experience, my preference is to look forward, to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead and rededicate the administration to the task of fixing Nigeria. But I believe we can also learn from the obstacles we have overcome and the progress we made thus far, to help strengthen the plans that we have in place to put Nigeria back on the path of progress. We affirm our belief in democracy as the form of government that best assures the active participation and actual benefit of the people. Despite the many years of hardship and disappointment the people of this nation have proved inherently good, industrious tolerant, patient and generous. The past years have witnessed huge flows of oil revenues. From 2010 average oil prices were $100 per barrel. But economic and security co...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Private Life: On James Baldwin

JAMES BALDWIN IN HYDE PARK, LONDON. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALLAN WARREN. Via Wikimedia Commons , licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 .   In his review of James Baldwin’s third novel, Another Country , Lionel Trilling asked: “How, in the extravagant publicness in which Mr. Baldwin lives, is he to find the inwardness which we take to be the condition of truth in the writer?” But Baldwin’s sense of inwardness had been nourished as much as it had been damaged by the excitement and danger that came from what was public and urgent. Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room dramatized the conflict between a longing for a private life, even a spiritual life, and the ways in which history and politics intrude most insidiously into the very rooms we try hardest to shut them out of. Baldwin had, early in his career, elements of what T. S. Eliot attributed to Henry James, “a mind so fine that it could not be penetrated by an idea.” The rest of the time, however, he did not have this luxury, as pub...
Post a Comment
Read more