Aregbesola cautioned over schools’ classification •Merging of schools regressive - Omisore

Following the reactions trailing the recent classification of schools in Osun State by the administration of Governor Rauf Aregbesola, the Old Students’ Association of Baptist High School (BHS), Iwo, has asked the governor to thread softly so as to avoid unnecessary imbroglio.

The association maintained that any sustainable policy should not engender acrimony as the current education policy in the state has generated and insisted that the governor should have a rethink since it has now shown that lack of public debate before the policy was finally made had made it unpopular.

National President of the association and an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Ibadan, Oyesoji Aremu, expressed this view with newsmen in his Ibadan office at the weekend.

While expressing the association’s support for the new policy, if it would enhance education in the state and would not in anyway put on the parents avoidable burden, the BHS Old Students’ Association boss said the peculiarities of schools including the culture, tradition and orientation must not just be jettisoned.

According to him, schools like BHS and others in that category were big enough to accommodate both middle and high schools and saw no reason why such schools should still be divided which has ignited undue and unnecessary controversy.

For instance, Aremu said the idea of wearing hijab to BHS by some students which caused commotion was not well thought, asking the governor to explain to the whole world whether hijab was part of the official uniform approved for the state schools.

“If it is yes, the governor should ensure that the schools with the culture, tradition and orientation of hijab wearing should be reserved for hijab wearing students, but, if it is not, then wearing of it to schools by any student should be seen and treated as an act of indiscipline,” he noted.

Aremu reminded the governor that parents didn’t just choose schools for their children, they took a lot of things into consideration, especially, proximity to their homes and peculiarities like school’s culture and tradition, noting that anything that would alter all these could not receive their blessings.

Meanwhile, the former Senator that represented Osun East in the National Assembly, Iyiola Omisore, has said the education policy of the state governor, Rauf Aregbesola, which led to merging of schools, was regressive and confusing.

He said the action was a reflection of lack of administrative qualities on the part of the present leadership of the state.

The former deputy governor stated this in Akure, after paying condolence visit to the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Chief Olu Falae, on the death of his son, Deji, in an ill-fated Associated Airline crash.

In a statement from the state government and signed by Semiu Okanlawon, stated that “Omisore’s incoherent, uncoordinated attack on the education reforms in Osun only demonstrates his penchant and those of his cohorts for the kind of educational standards that his party sustained in order to keep the bulk of our people totally relegated and weakened to be productive enough for the society.

“They said we are changing schools to mixed schools! How can any organisation protest changing the nature of just ten schools out of over 3, 000 schools if what they are saying is genuine?”

Source; Tribune