BY BUNMI OGUNSOLA

Still basking in the euphoria of accolades that greeted his government’s decision to construct modern, state-of-the-art Caring Heart Mega Schools across the state, Governor Olusegun Mimiko has blazed another trail with the introduction of free shuttle bus scheme for primary and secondary school students.

The people of Ondo State, no doubt, were also affected by the harsh effects of the partial fuel subsidy removal carried out by the Federal Government in January 2012 which led to a hike  in the prices of goods and services including transportation fares.

Moved by the development and in line with his administration’s Caring Heart policy,  Mimiko announced a Free Shuttle Ride scheme for all students in uniform. The scheme was kickstarted with the state’s share of the buses allocated to the state by the Federal Government as part of the measures to ameliorate the effects of the subsidy removal regime.

The buses were allocated to the various routes  in Akure, the state capital, while the students in  private and public primary and secondary schools took advantage of the scheme by boarding them to their destinations in the morning and return with them after closing hours.

Barely two weeks after the commencement of the Ondo State’s Free School Shuttle Scheme,  the state government concluded fresh arrangements for additional 50 buses to the existing fleet of 20 with 33,000 student beneficiaries.
Pronto, the 50 buses were delivered to complement the pilot scheme being operated first in the state capital.

Briefing journalists on the scheme in Akure, last week, the Commissioner for Information, Mr Kayode Akinmade, said,  “When we found out that the number of buses we  had in Akure were not enough, Mr. Governor approved the purchase of 50 additional vehicles but we have since procured scores of others that had been distributed to other major towns in the state”.

He explained that the branded  vehicles were handed over to the Ministry of Transport to manage alongside the existing ones so that virtually all the students could be accomodated in the scheme.
On the impact of the scheme on the education sector, the commissioner stated that daily assessment by Quality Education Assurance evaluators showed that it has shored up students and pupils’ punctuality in schools.

He said,  “We also found out that about 60 per cent of our students and pupils were missing the first lessons in the morning because of transport problem, but with this scheme, schools are now recording almost 100 per cent attendance of first lessons everyday.”

Also speaking on the development,  the Commissioner for Transportation in the state, Otunba Nicholas Tofowomo, said about 33, 000 students and pupils were initially benefiting from the scheme when it was first inaugurated in Akure but added that the figure had since risen to cover virtually all the students.

At the moment, Tofowomo said students  gather in all the 80 bus stops on seven routes within Akure, very early in the morning, enjoying the shuttle buses to their schools without waiting to collect transport fares from their parents.
He said, “We have monitoring teams which supervise boarding of the buses and their exit, in addition to bus guides fashioned after the London Underground Transport System.

“It is simply a novel idea in the transportation system in Nigeria which is also one of the state government’s welfare programmes and direct delivery of part of the dividends of democracy.”
Tofowomo said the students now recognised the importance of punctuality and stressed the need for parents to avoid their wards’ lateness to schools by bringing them early enough to shuttle bus stops.

Meanwhile, Mimiko has taken public school administration to the next level in Ondo State by also complementing the free shuttle school bus regime with staff buses he provided and attached to the various Mega Schools built by his administration in all the local government areas in the state.

Obviously, an architectural masterpieces that are pleasant to behold, and functionally built to be 21st-Century digitally compliant centres of learning, the Mega Schools, among many departures from the past, accommodate either 1,050 pupils for the Type-1, and 525 pupils for the Type-2.

All the special schools have computer-rooms, music-rooms,  art-galleries,  demonstration farms, sports-centres and are all adorned with the latest accouterments of the most modern educational facilities.
For instance, they were provided with renewable energy technology as back-up supply for conventional electricity supply.

The Information Commissioner, while taking journalists round some of the schools in Akure, said, “Rather than a mushrooming of state primary schools that have proven to be inadequate as platforms for building an educationally sound critical mass, the state educational policy provides the opportunity for the lumping of two, three, or even, four existing primary schools together to make one Mega School.”

He added that Ondo State government has been training and retraining teachers to ensure good instructional quality and specifically, through its Quality Assurance Agency, recalibrated from the Inspectorate Department of the Education Ministry.

To sustain environmental cleanliness, ensure institutional maintenance of buildings, plants and machineries, he said “the Mega Schools are to be outsourced to Facility Managers who will ensure that the ambience at these schools are not only made conducive to learning but, that the teaching tools and equipments are at their functional best.”

Akinmade said that most of the schools had been built all over Ondo State while others were in various stages of completion.
Mimiko, at the inception of the Mega Schools arrangement, explained that it  was to ensure that children of the less privileged were not prevented from enjoying qualitative education like the children of the elite and wealthy individuals in private schools.

According to him, the need to democratise access to quality education and allow the children of the masses equal access to good education regardless of financial status was being demonstrated in the state.
He said, “This can only present a moral and policy dilemma for a government that is not steeped in good governance ethos. We identified the need to provide equal access to quality education using the right approach, hence the concept of the Mega Schools.”

He lamented that despite being  previously one of the most intellectually vibrant states in the country, Ondo State’s performances in the Senior School Certificate Examinations, SSCE, in the last few years before the advent of his administration, had been disappointingly poor.

In order to rectify the imbalance from source and expose the children of the less privileged to good education just like the children of the elites, the governor said he started building model primary schools, appropriately named “Caring Heart Mega Schools” to reflect the scope of learning possibilities and the sheer capacity for students’ intake.
“Avant-garde in outlook but strictly proletarian in utility, the Mega Schools are the Ondo State government’s way of making available the best of education obtainable in private schools in the state’s public schools system and they are to serve as models below which future public or private schools cannot function.,” he added.