Education Requires Continuous Investments to Achieve The Best’___ Alawiye-King

Education Requires Continuous Investments to Achieve The Best___ Alawiye-King

AJAGBE ADEYEMI TESLIM

SPONSORED BY: H&H

Chairman of the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (LASUBEB) Wahab Alawiye-King has described education as a social good which requires continuous investment if the best must be achieved.

According to the former lawmaker, the social nature of education forces its demand to outweigh supply, and so there is a need for continuous investments to achieve equilibrium or saturation point.

Alawiye-King, who addressed journalists in his office, said the LASUBEB is out to ensure every child’s potential is fully realised through the provision of effective and qualitative education.

He said: “Education is a social good, and this makes its demand outweigh supply most of the time. This thus implies market failure, but bringing the market to equilibrium or a saturation point will require investments and interventions. These interventions however must come in a structured manner; they must be monitored and controlled so they do not become intrusive interferences.

“Investment in education is also a continuous process and not a one shot deal. Lagos State has about 1,017 schools and 14,000 teachers; this is a good example of very limited resources for which there are competing uses and users. This thus pushes us to improvise, prioritise, and optimize our resources. Aside infrastructure, the content is also very paramount. Though it has been established that learning can happen anywhere, but we don’t want to rely on that, and that is why we make our environment conducive enough for learning and teaching. The House of Representatives Committee on Basic Education really praised us for doing a good job after visiting Lagos and some other states. We are not resting as it is our determination to make Lagos better than we met it. This can however be possible when every stakeholder contributes their won effort.

“Schools are part of the community and so people must take ownership. We don’t want to create a tragedy of the common where what belongs to everybody belongs to nobody, somebody must take ownership. That is why we are working with our social mobilisation department, which is a bridge between the community and the schools, to enlighten them as to why they must take ownership. Those are some of the things we do to ensure we continue to have better infrastructure in our schools.

“Since our mantra says ‘leaving no child behind’, we are also doing all we can to ensure our special-need children have access to qualitative basic education. We are not discriminatory and prejudicial to people with disabilities, and that is why we keep improving the 31 inclusive units/schools because we want those special-need pupils to see themselves as part of the society. We also have about five special need schools for those who must be given special consideration.

“We also train our teachers specially for to be able to teach these category of pupils. We have been able to develop the cooperative teaching manual for our teachers, so that regular teachers can also teach a special pupil. Every other teacher can use the manual to teach special kids.

“Many of our schools are also new-designs and special need-friendly for accessibility, forming part of the agreement with UBEC on infrastructural development. There is the mid-day meal for special-needs children, fully sponsored by the state government. We don’t discriminate in any way and we will continue to reach out to international and local organisations to assist us.”