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THE Board of the National Senior Secondary Education Commission (NSSEC), says it is committed to promoting institutional partnerships and collaborations on funding.

According to the board, the funding is expected to be with the state governments, private sector, international development partners and donor organisations to improve funding of senior secondary schools in the country.

NSSEC Board Chairman, Dr Nimota Akanbi, said this in Abuja on Wednesday at the end of a two-day retreat for members of the governing board of the commission.

She said the board was also committed to prescribing minimum standards as well as intervene in critical areas of needs of the schools nationwide.

She also promised the board would develop a robust Management Information System (MIS) that will capture all relevant data relating to senior secondary schools.

” We are committed to adopting the Public Private Partnership model in solving some of the existing challenges within senior secondary education sub-sector.

” We are also committed to deliberately promote STEAM and TVET across all

Senior secondary schools in Nigeria,” she said.

She said the board had developed a national policy to bring the country’s senior secondary education at par with their foreign counterparts.

Meanwhile, the Executive Secretary of the commission, Prof. Benjamin Abakpa, said it had embarked on measures to ensure state governments produce quality teachers in their senior secondary schools.

Abakpa expressed worries over teacher/students ratio in public schools, saying that the commission was receiving collaboration with state governments to solve the problems.

” Teachers are the foundation for success and the quality of learning depends on the quality of teachers.

” What we have done is to refresh and train the teachers in the various states. We are starting with the master trainer and with time it will transcend the lower level.

” We have also received a lot of cooperation. If you have teachers and resources to train them are not their, then they will not be effective.

” The commission is set to intervene in critical areas in the state and ones we have the resources, the deficit will be taken care of and we can have quality teachers,” he said. (NAN)

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Tags: Nimota Akanbi NSSEC Prof. Benjamin Abakpa