New Lagos comprehensive schools will take off- Commissioner

The 12 newly-introduced, fit-for-purpose comprehensive schools will take off across the six education districts in Lagos State on Monday, the Commissioner for Education, Mrs Folasade Adefisayo, has said.

Adefisayo said on Friday in Lagos that two comprehensive schools had been established in each of the six education districts in the state.

She described comprehensive school as a fit-for-purpose model, parallel to the current education system, that provides suitable career-ready skills set to students with different profiles of intelligence or intellectual competence.

According to her, the comprehensive school is not a new phenomenon, as many countries have adapted to the changing skills requirement of the 21 century technology age by designing a fit-for-purpose secondary school model.

"The current path is too narrow an option for the ever-changing skill requirements of the workforce.

"The essence of establishing the comprehensive schools is to produce students who can fit into the workplace requirements.

"It is a fit-for-purpose education plan that will provide opportunities for employment and a path to entrepreneurship," the commissioner said.

Adefisayo explained that the school would start with those in Senior Secondary One (SS1) and teaching/training would begin with core skills such as Financial Literacy, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing and Sales and Digital Literacy for the pilot phase.

She said that the comprehensive schools would later offer subjects like Agriculture; Tech and Digital Skills; Beauty and Events; Building and Construction; Media and Entertainment.

Adefisayo said that the initiative would give the students opportunities to maximise either academics or vocation/skills acquisition, with a view to reducing the increasing rate of school dropout and actively engaging the students in their various skills of interest.

According to her, the additional knowledge gained will positively give the students a veritable source of living while still in school, and encourage them to be employers of labour.

"The overarching objective is to produce a new generation of technical experts for the Lagos of our dreams," the commissioner said.

She said that the introduction of Eko Excel in Lagos primary schools had brought the joy of schooling to pupils, hence, there had been rise in population of pupils in schools.

"About 30 something per cent of children in the state are attending public schools. So there are more children in private schools.

"So hopefully, the Eko Excel programme will drive children from those low quality private schools into public schools.

"We are trying to develop a Developing Effective Private Education in Nigeria – DEEPEN-like structure, to improve the private schools.

"We can do more and we certainly will do more. We must even do more in fairness to the children in the state," she said.

The commissioner said that the ministry was working with the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) on loan portfolio of up to N5 billion at single digit interest rate to help improve some low quality private schools.