By Ebun Sessou

FORMER Commissioner for Education and governorship aspirant under the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State, Dr Leke Pitan has said that the rot in the educational sector in the country can only be erased with a holistic approach to human capital development oriented programme for the administrative and teaching personnel of primary and secondary schools in the country.

Speaking at the 2014 Stakeholders Forum National Dialogue on education with the theme: Deconstructing the Continuing Crises of Standards and Performance in Nigerian Secondary Schools at Ikoyi Hotels and Towers, Lagos, Pitan opined constant training and re-training of school principals and teaching personnel is a recipe for quick revival of education sector.

According to him: “Specific trainings, workshops and seminars on the nagging and incipient school problems will help the principals, teachers and other school workers to fashion out new ways of dealing with school programmes.”

Citing an ugly scenario, Pitan said a situation where a primary school graduate could not speak fluently or construct a complete sentence, is unfortunate, noting that in the past, a primary six school leaver was a good material to gain immediate employment as a clerical officer in any government or corporate establishment.

He blamed both parents and school administrators for the poor enrolment into primary and secondary schools.

He added that the pupils that are often selected in most of the public schools are often not the right materials for the pre-basic and basic classes.

His words: “We have to return to the era when only the qualified and competent are selected into the primary cadre and the basic education programme.

“A situation when a parent insisted that a child who is not competent be pushed up to the next grade, would only portend danger in the future. And this was already happening with mass failure in external examinations like the West African Examinations Council Examinations and the Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examinations’, he said.