25th September, 2015
An educationist, Mrs Ronke Soyombo, says fees being charged by private schools is not a guarantee for access to quality education.
Soyombo, the Director-General, Office of the Education Quality Assurance in Lagos State, expressed this view in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Lagos.
She spoke against the backdrop of assertions that schools charging relatively low fees were substandard.
According to him, outrageous fees being charged in some schools had nothing to do with the quality of education they give the students.
Soyombo noted that as a quality assurance officer, schools charging lower fees still worked within the government’s policies to deliver quality education.
“In as much as we want a good learning environment for our children, the environment is, however, secondary.
“What is important is that there has to be clear teaching and learning going on in our schools.
“Even if the school is ‘low-cost’, we want good teaching and learning there.
“What we are not be ready to compromise is the standard – it must be effective enough,’’ the director-general said.
Also Mrs Esther Dada, the President, Association for Formidable Education Development (AFED), an NGO, said charging relatively lower schools should not be mistaken for the standard of such schools.
She said AFED’s policy to charge “low fees” in its schools was part of its social responsibility to give back to the society what it got from it.
“The schools under AFED charge low fees and it has not affected the standard and quality of education in those schools.
“The fact that we are ‘low-income’ schools do not make us low or poor quality schools.
“We are trying to give back to the society what we got from it a long time ago.
“We discovered that if we do not do that fast, we will be failing the next generation and that is why we have taken it upon ourselves to do that,” she said.
According to AFED President, their schools are being run by educationists, who are not ready to compromise standards.
“We want every child to be carried along; we do not want to leave any child behind because he or she cannot afford the school fees being charged by elite schools.”
She said AFED schools in line with its policy of not-for-profit education, currently charge fees ranging from N3, 000 to N25, 000 per pupil per annum.