By Funmi Ogundare
A pupil of Owina Primary Idunmwowina, Ovia Northeast Local Government, Edo State, Miss Florence Patrick, 10, has emerged the Executive one-day State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) Chairperson for winning the reading and fluency competition, organised for pupils in public primary schools as part of effort aimed at commemorating the third anniversary of Edo State Basic Education Sector Transformation( Edo BEST).
She was able to read 189 words per minute beating other pupils in other schools who had contested.
As part of her function as the chairperson, she approved the transfer of her teacher, Mrs. Roseline Eke-Obiyo who lived far from the school.
Addressing journalist, recently, in Edo State, the Chairperson of the board, Dr. Joan Osa Oviawe expressed excitement about Patrick’s success, saying the average reading rate in other developing countries, is about 180 words per minute, adding that when she was given a passage to read, she emerged the fastest reader without any mistake and won the competitition.
“Miss Patrick was able to read 189 words per minute. As her reward for her outstanding academic ability, she was made the one-day SUBEB Chairperson. As part of her function as chairman for the day, she was given an opportunity to take some decisions.”
She acknowledged the role of teachers in impacting the lives of their pupils, adding that Mrs. Eke-Obiyo has been wanting to be transferred for many years because where she lives and teaches are quite far.
“So when we asked the one-day SUBEB chairperson what she would like to do, she said she would like to facilitate the transfer of her teacher. So effective next term, she is moving to a school closer to her home where we believe that she will continue to teach well and be a role model to her pupils in the classroom.
“It takes a good teacher to educate a child, so in everything that we do, we also want to cascade it down to acknolege the role of their teacher in that process.”
She listed some of the challenges her board faced in ensuring the success of the Edo BEST to include; the lopsidedness of teacher distribution in the state, the practice of having multiple schools in one compound, as well as teacher’s attitude to work.
According to her, “In an environment where accountability and transparency were not the typical norm, trying to introduce those two important attributes into any system,you are bound to face resistance and backlash. For instance, when we came in, the distribution of teachers across the 18 local government areas was very lopsided. We had the bulk of our teachers from the urban centres, so we had up to 40 excess teachers, so they will just create arms of classes and in each class, they don’t have more than 10 or 15 pupils.
“There was a massive waste of resources. Another thing we encountered when we came in, was the practice of having multiple schools in one compound, so a compound will have four different schools and four different sets of uniforms and teachers and four sets of administrations and so in trying to do a more wholistic transfer of teachers, we discovered that in pushing the teachers to semi-urban areas, there was still resistance.
“Another challenge that we faced, was their general attitude to work and there was a certain kind of deception that it was the remnant that attends public school, so therefore, their learning was expendable. So you find out that any teacher could just take off for weeks without going to school and still collect their salary, but that is no longer the case.”
In her response, Miss Patrick thanked the Governor Godwin Obaseki for the Edo Best initiative and impacting the lives of pupils saying it has enhanced pupils reading and writing ability.
She appealed to the governor to assist in the renovation of their school building, provision of toilet facilities, borehole and fencing of the school, saying, “If you do this for us, we will be happy.
