The prayer of the Cross River State Commissioner for Education, Offiong E. Offiong to prosecute private school proprietors in the state who continuously see the establishment of schools as a business has been answered as the state government has directed the education ministry to redirect efforts towards identifying and closing down such schools as well as the prosecution of her proprietors.
Offiong E. Offiong, told calitown.com in his office that this measure has become necessary to stem the ugly practice of these proprietors whose activities jeopardize government’s positive intentions for education in the state. He however did not frown at the establishment of private schools in the state but stated clearly that where a private school is to be established, it must meet the minimum standards set by government for the establishment of private schools in the state. He further informed that the ministry will soon commence also the re-accreditation of private schools in the state to ascertain the level of standards compliance in the schools, just as it plans to update the knowledge of the 5, 000 secondary school teachers in the state’s employ and the 13, 000, in her primary school system, through workshops and seminars that will address identified deficiencies in the state’s secondary and primary system.
On the CRS Institute of Technology and Management, ITM, Ugep, Offiong informed calitown.com that government has notified the National Board for Technical Education, NBTE, of its intention to open the institution and that the Board has responded by promising to dispatch a team to the institution for an “advisory visit”, within two weeks.
He also told calitown.com that government was happy with the contributions of the Cross River State University of Technology, CRUTECH, to serving the technical manpower needs of the state, adding that before now, government had toyed with the idea of recruiting non-indigenes to handle technical courses in the state’s 18 technical colleges, but had dropped the idea when it discovered that in the last recruitment of technical teachers conducted in the state, the bulk of the 150 applications for the jobs, came from graduates of the institution, a situation he considered as one of the direct impacts CRUTECH has had on the state.
Commissioner Offiong put it on record that government in a bid to reward excellence has ensured that all the First class graduates of CRUTECH are sponsored abroad to pursue post-graduate degrees so that the state can benefit immensely from their training and further help address the educational challenges of the state.