25th May, 2015
Kanjal Godshield/Calabar
The Cross River State government on Monday said it has shut down over 200 illegal private schools between 2007 and 2015, for not meeting up with the stipulated guidelines for the establishment of schools.
The state Commissioner for Education, Prof Offiong E. Offiong, who disclosed this during the end of tenure in Calabar, noted that, the affected schools operated without approval from the ministry.
Offiong said the closure of the schools was aimed at maintaining the good standard of education in the state.
He said that the illegal schools were located mostly in rural areas. “These affected schools were not willing to key into the Ministry of Education’s standard of school establishment and were without approval from the ministry,” he said.
He disclosed that the state government has established 17 primary schools in the last eight years, thus increasing the number of primary schools in the state from 1,016 to 1,077.
He added that the ministry had within 2007 and 2015 spent over one billion naira in the registration of candidates for the West African Examination Council Examination.