‘Nigeria should strive for a minimum of 30 per cent budget on education’

Since the Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, presented the 2015 budget estimates of about N4.358trillion to the National Assembly out of which N492, 034billion was proposed for education, some observers have contended that the vote still fell short of UNESCO’s 26 per cent recommendation and was not likely to effect change in the troubled sector.

However, former Executive Secretary,
National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof Peter Okebukola in this interview with UJUNWA ATUEYI clarified the true stance of the budget.

Okebukola who is also the President of UNESCO Global University Network for Innovation (GUNI) Africa and Chairman of Council of University of
West Africa, advised that the budget proposal be raised to 30 per cent, among other issues.

Excerpts:

THE 2015 budget as revealed by the Federal Government showed a proposal of N492, 034billion for education out of N4.3trillion national budget.

In the 2011 budget, N306.3bn was allocated to education; in 2012(N400.15bn); in 2013(N426.53bn); and (N493b) in 2014 representing 10.7 per cent of the N4.6tn national budget in that year.

Looking at this analysis, what is your perception about this trend?

The trend of course is far from encouraging considering the deplorable state of our education system. We need to at least triple the current allocation to shake off the ignoble state of the system by applying the funds largely to significantly improve facilities for teaching and learning, teacher quality and welfare and curriculum delivery.

We need the funds to break down obstacles to access of over 10 million
out-of-school children. We need the funds to improve school safety. We need the funds to improve reading culture among our youths and for overall improvement in the quality of delivery of education.

I should stress that the 10.7 per cent you
quoted only gives a narrow view of the
anticipated picture of funding education in Nigeria in 2015.

My research group estimates the proportion, nationally, to be above 20 per cent, when we factor in budgets from state governments and from budgets of intervention agencies notably the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund).

In 2015, UBEC and TETFund alone will inject not less than N100 billion into basic and higher education respectively which are not captured in the regular national budget which you are
referring to. This is aside from funds which SURE-P will provide to support education.

We also need to realise that the budget
proposal of N492,034 bn for education going to the national assembly for appropriation is only for funding education at the federal level.

This will service only federal tertiary institutions (about a third of the total number in Nigeria), 104 Unity Colleges (less than 0.002 per cent of the national total), 25 parastatals of the Federal Ministry of Education and the Federal Ministry of Education itself.

Each of the 36 states and the FCT will also present their education budgets to their respective State Assemblies. When
aggregated together alongside the contribution of the intervention agencies, we will have a proportion in the neighbourhood of 23 per cent.

Does it mean that the 26 per cent United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) recommendation is not realisable?

The 26 per cent figure often ascribed to
UNESCO is mythical. It only exists in the
Nigerian literature on education. I suspect that it is a figure that arose out of a recommendation of a localised UNESCO meeting, which probably held in Nigeria sometime in the past and does not bind the entire organisation. I have had to ask two Directors-General of UNESCO about this figure and they claim not to be aware of it.

For Nigeria, I believe we should strive for a minimum of 30 per cent for the next 20 years to clear the mess in the sector.

Clearly, 30 per cent is realisable for if there is a will, there is a way. Lip service in funding is what education generously gets in Nigeria.

I am aware that other sectors such as health, agriculture and security are important and will also desire generous funding. What our leaders fail to realise and appreciate is that education is the antidote to challenges in all other sectors.

It is often said that education cannot solve all of society’s problems but without education no solution is possible.
What we should do in my view is to elevate funding to education at the federal, state and local government levels for the next 20 years with the collateral effect of lowering funding in other sectors.

After 20 years when quality education is on solid ground for all citizens, the allocation to education can then slide downwards for other sectors to enjoy a hike in their budgetary allocation.

It is a matter of careful planning and continuity in the implementation of government policies on education at all levels.

One important point to note as I conclude my answer to this question is the judicious use of the funds, albeit meagre, which is allocated and released for education. There is a lot of leakage
and corruption in the system that the more we throw money into the sector, the more money becomes available to be “chopped”.

There is the need, therefore, to install a robust accountability and probity mechanism into the financial operations in the sector (and of course, other sectors) so that as much as possible, all financial leakages are plugged.

With these allocations, what is the place of Nigeria (being the Giant of Africa) when
compared to other African countries?

Let me answer this question with some
empirical data. As leader of an African Union- European Union project, which studied the
quality of university education in 2014, my team found a generally poor quality of higher education systems in all 54 African countries that we studied in comparison with Europe and North America.

Within this gloomy picture, it is
bittersweet to note that the Nigerian university system rated among the best in Africa. It is proverbially said that if you have not visited the farm of others, you will believe that your father’s farm is either the best or the worst.

Aside from South Africa and Egypt, our datashowed that no other national university system in Africa matched the quality of curriculum, staff and students of the Nigerian university system.

At international conferences, Nigerian scholars are rated among the best in terms of quality of participation. Students trained in Nigerian universities are highly sought after for postgraduate studies in European and North American universities and during postgraduate
training, they perform among the best.

On the not-so-pleasing side, our data revealed that relative to many other countries in Africa, Europe and North America, Nigerian universities
are poor in infrastructure, reading culture is poor among students and research culture among staff is weak.

If we elevate the performance of our universities on the variables of quality of infrastructure, quality of research and improve reading culture among our students, no nation in Africa will come anywhere near the tall standing of the Nigerian university system in terms of the quality of process and quality of products.

This is the task for those who will be steering governance in Nigeria after the February 2015 elections. We need to balance quality with quantity in delivering university education.

The
rate of expansion in enrolment should match the rate of provision of facilities and human resources. We need to reduce financial leakages and profligate spending by political and other office holders so as to free funds for better funding of our universities.

If the Nigerian university system is rated among the best in Africa as you said, despite the shortfall in funding, what kind of system do you think we will have if education in general is adequately funded?

If education in general in Nigeria were better funded, we will have a country that will parade the best statistics in the world in health, education, security, economy, environment, agriculture, science and technology and in other sectors.

We will have a country, which the
Chairman of the NUC Board while I was
Executive Secretary, Alhaji Maitama Sule,
envisions to be paradise on earth. We will have a country that will lead Africa to claim the 21st century.

As Executive Secretary of NUC between
2001 and 2006, I confirm that the Obasanjo administration ensured a huge jump in funding of our universities which translated to significant improvement in the global ranking of our universities in 2007. Since we did this before, we can do it again across the education sector.

I should stress that the condition of adequate funding is only just necessary to make us get to that dreamland. It is not sufficient. It will become sufficient when we have truly
nationalistic, corruption-intolerant and God-
fearing leaders at all levels of governance and in
both the public and private sectors. I am not
talking about the president or state governors or
managing directors of private companies. I am
talking about these and all those who are in
leadership including vice-chancellors, principals
of secondary schools, head teachers of primary
schools, heads of academic departments in
universities, polytechnics and colleges of
education. May God give us such worthy
leaders.
Would you say that the present administration
has shown serious attention to educational
development?
No doubt, the present administration has done
well in many areas on education development.

Several areas notably access and quality are still struggling to be served. You know I am not a politician but an academic, so I will provide an unbiased assessment.
Let us take 2014 as example. There were at least 12 defining events in the education sector in Nigeria in 2014.

It is possible to cluster these as the good, the bad and the ugly. On the goodand positive entries in the report card are the improved performance of candidates in the May/June Senior School Certificate examination conducted by WAEC; increase in access as additional 982,000 were enrolled nationwide in the basic education system and the carrying capacity of the 129 universities leapt to about 1,000,000. Recall that the present administration established 12 new federal universities and the Presidential Special Scholarship Scheme for Innovation and Development.

We also had the establishment of more Almajiri schools to depress the number of out-of-school children, which was put at about 10 million. The curriculum at all levels enjoyed some positive tweaking by NERDC, NCCE, NBTE, and NUC.

NUC’s action was particularly striking in
entrenching an improved entrepreneurship studies programme in Nigerian universities whose positive impact showed during the national entrepreneurship fair in December 2014.

Funding for physical development and research by TETFund was above the N80 billion mark during the year. These six events were blue marks on the report card.

On the “bad” and negative (red) entries in the education report card in 2014 are four notable events.

The woeful performance of candidates in the November/December senior school
certificate examination with more than 50 per cent failing to earn five credits in English, Mathematics and three other subjects is one.

Also, teacher quality across all levels of the education system remained generally shameful and unacceptably low. Quality of buildings and other teaching-learning infrastructure did not significantly improve and so is the poor reading culture among students.

The “ugly” entry on the report card on school safety has put Nigeria on the dark side of the world map.

This entry includes the alleged slaughter by Boko Haram of 43 secondary school students in Federal Government College, Buni Yadi in February and the abduction in April of about 200 girls from Government Secondary School in Chibok.

Taken together, the overall score shown in the education report card at the state and federal levels is far from the pass grade. If I were the class teacher of this student known as Nigeria, I will make the following closing comments on the 2014 performance in education: “You need to buckle up next session.

You were rather too laid back with severe
consequences for your future. Work harder in
the area of access, teacher quality and
facilities.”

The 2015 general elections will commence in less than one month, what advice do you have for Nigerians as regards electing credible
leaders.

I will advise Nigerians including myself to “shine our eyes” and not be fooled or hoodwinked by sweet talks of the politicians who are interested only in their pockets. We should vote according to our conscience and in line with what we believe the politician can deliver by way of dividends of democracy. This is why education is important. With a current illiterate population of about 30 per cent, more will be hoodwinked.

With more money to education, illiteracy rate will depress and the electorate will be wiser when casting votes and selecting their leaders.

Written by UJUNWA ATUEYI

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DEEPEN seeks increase in media coverage of education

To facilitate a more enabling environment and a more effective market that would provide increased quality of education for private schools, Developing Effective Private Education Nigeria (DEEPEN), a programme funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), has identified the need for improved media coverage of education programmes.

This became imperative following a discovery that the private sector engages large chunk of pupils in Lagos Private Schools. In September 2013, DEEPEN embarked on a five-year programme on how the media market can help children, parents, teachers, policy makers, school owners and managers in getting quality information to make informed decision.

The innovative programme initiated by DFID was designed to use a market-development approach to improve learning outcomes in Lagos private schools, through making markets work for the poor methodology.
Speaking at a media forum tagged, “A
Commercially Viable Approach to Increasing Education Coverage in the Media”, Team Leader of DEEPEN, Mr. Gboyega Ilusanya, stated that recent analysis revealed that private schools are major players on the Lagos education scene, dominating at the pre-school and primary levels and serving children from all levels of household income.

He reminded that most of these private
schools, for several reasons, are not licensed to operate, yet they are found in the system delivering educational services to pupils and their parents. Thus the need for creating useful information and quality education programmes that would serve as a guide for all stakeholders.

He said: “With estimated five million Lagos parents with children in over 15,000 private schools and 2,000 public schools, the state has one of the largest private education markets in the world and credible effort to improve human capital clearly needs to include the private sector which is now the main provider of
education, even for children from low-income households.”

“The five-year project which will be concluded by 2018, is anticipating a vibrant and dynamic market for private education especially in low-cost schools across Lagos.

It is also expected that the sector would be characterised by learning innovations and quality improvement for children at all levels of household income, as well as to have a private school that responds to parental demands and adapt to meet their expectations for better education.”

To achieve these, Gboyega informed that the role of the media is very crucial, thus the need for increase in media education coverage to help parents make informed decision and spur school managers to best practices.

His words, “DEEPEN has conducted detailed market analysis to identify the main constraints and challenges for improved private education in Lagos, and as part of the five-year activities we are to work with the media, getting them to sit and discuss how education coverage in the media can be improved in a commercially viable way and what would be the necessary support.”

“A recent assessment of current practices
around the media coverage of education in Lagos showed a widespread of lack of dedicated education programmes on radio and Television but an appreciable and regular coverage of education by the print media.

“The assessment showed that the majority of broadcast media practitioners consider education programmes as mainly for children as part of their community service and corporate social responsibility; and as unpopular and commercially unattractive.

However, Deputy Team Leader, Stephen
Bayley, during the media workshop, remarked that the current low coverage of education by the media, especially the broadcast media, can be reversed not only to make relevant information available to education stakeholders but to generate revenue for media houses and supporting organisations.

There are millions of education stakeholders who are potential audience for issue based, quality education content. Parents need information that will aid their decision-making processes around their children’s education, they will welcome a platform to regularly discuss and debate education issues.

The media can help parents meet these needs and generate substantial revenue from advertisers and sponsors targeting this massive market.

“Our findings revealed that at least there are 26 radio, 12 television and 20print media currently operating regularly in Lagos; more than 50 per cent of broadcast media have no dedicated, issue-based education programme,
while appreciable, regular education coverage by print media

On his part, the Intervention Leader, Tolase Olatinwo charged participants to refocus on their target audience for education contents and programmes and engage in education programmes that could stimulate audience views, appeal to parents, as well as attract sponsors and advertisers, so as to build quality education system in Lagos state.

He said parents, children, schools and policy makers need information to add value to their work since relevant information helps in decision-making.

The forum was attended by education
correspondents in the print and broadcast
industry in Lagos State, who unanimously stated that entertainment has lessened the importance of education, as most sponsors and advertisers have interest in sponsoring entertainment programmes rather than educational programmes.

Etisalat calls for more funding of education sector

COMMITTED to promoting academic excellence among tertiary institution students in Nigeria, leading telecommunications giant, Etisalat recently rewarded some outstanding students of Nigerian higher institutions for their brave academic performances, through its education empowerment scheme, Etisalat Merit Awards that held at the Oriental Hotel Lagos.

Speaking at the event, the CEO Etisalat
Nigeria, Mr. Mathew Willsher said the award is a scholarship scheme designed to fulfill the company’s goal of empowering the society through knowledge acquisition and promoting education within Nigeria.

In his opening remarks, Willsher reiterated the importance of education and innovation to human development and improvement of the quality of human lives. He lamented the global illiteracy rate, which currently stands at one billion.

He also congratulated the 70 students drawn from seven universities in the country, describing them as the future of the Nigeria and adding that the country’s greatness in the area of innovation and scientific discoveries lay on their shoulders.

Speaking further, he canvassed private sector partnership for funding education in the country and argued that education is critical to development and should not be left exclusively to government to fund.

He added that this was why Etisalat Nigeria is involved with promoting education as part of the company’s corporate social responsibility.

He said: “We are gathered here in recognition of the importance of education. It is sad that about one billion people can’t read globally. We
know that government is doing a lot in the area of funding and promoting education, but corporate organizations also have roles to play and this is why we focus on education as one of our corporate social responsibility initiatives.”

“The importance of education is further
underscored by the fact that studies have
shown that countries where less than 20 per cent go to school are less developed compared to others. Countries with less literacy rate miss out on a lot of things because they have a
community of people who can’t read,” he added.

Highpoints of the ceremony was the
innovation contest among the participating universities and the award ceremony proper.
Selected scholars of the five institutions made five-minute presentations of innovations of their choice.

Tagged The Etisalat Innovation Moment, the presentations were judged based on
adaptability, value, social impact, environmental impact and rate of feasibility. They were scored by a panel of judges.

The entry by Onohaebi Samuel, a 400-level undergraduate of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of the University of Benin was adjudged the best, and he emerged winner.

James Fagboun of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife, and Eigbe Eghonghon of University of Lagos came second and third respectively.

While Samuel got N100, 000 and a HP
laptop for his efforts, Eghonghon and Fagboun won a Techno Phantom device each for their efforts. Besides, the participating students, 10 each from the seven schools that took part in
the contest, went home with N100, 000 each, while their schools were awarded N1.1 Million each courtesy of the telecommunication company.

Speaking after the ceremony, Samuel exuded happiness and said: “This is a dream come true for me. I have always wanted to be commended for my academic prowess and now that I have been so recognized, it would serve as a
motivation to do more, especially in the area of improving access to power for creative uses across all economic sectors.”

Taqwa School shines at global event, harps on research, technical skills

THE importance of research and technical skill acquisition among Muslim schools was recently stressed, as Taqwa Group of Schools lifted Nigeria’s image at the just-concluded international World Robot Olympiads, (WRO), competition held in Sochi, Russia.

The school represented Nigeria at the world stage after clinching the first position at the National Robotic Olympiads in the country.

The Managing Director, Taqwa Schools, Alhaja Maryam Alimi, who expressed her excitement about the feat, described the atmosphere in the schools as that of “complete education”.

According to her, it was a deserved honour for the school and students to have participated in a unique and important event organized for young inventors and constructors because it will
prepare them as future scientists and
researchers, who will surely make our world a better place and a more technologically- advanced nation.

Alimi also emphasised the need for Nigerians to pay more attention to the development of research and technical skills among children and young people.

“That is why besides the competition, Taqwa Schools engage the students in many other educational events expositions, cultural, research and entertainment,” she said.

The final competition in Russia brought
together participants from all over the world with great victories and spectacular ideas.

About 52 countries participated in the
competition. One of the participants, AbdulKadir Sayyidi, revealed that being part of the competition really helped in building his confidence. He, therefore,
called on other students to join the robotic club to increase their creative skills.

Also speaking, Ruqoyah Falade, a Basic5
pupil of the school said she was, indeed, elated to be among other participants from other countries all over the world and interact freely with them.

The Principal, Taqwa High School, Hajia
Qudrah Olaleye, stated that it is part of the school’s policy to involve the students in as many beneficial competitions as possible in order to build their physical and mental ability.

“It is a thing of joy to be part of the world
event. They took part last year, too, and it has been a good exposure for the students. We are the only Muslim school there and we were determined to win.”

She urged parents to give the needed support to help the children achieve their future careers.

She said: “In Taqwa Schools, it has never
been only academics as usual, the psychomotor domain of education was also given preference and we are very proud as we raised the bar by winning the Lagos State Private Schools Table Tennis “Talent Hunt” organized by Atico Global Concepts in May, 2014 with Gold Medal.

Written by Sulaimon Salau

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Pledge to restore discipline, revitalise learning at FSTC

Says school’s workshops in comatose
A RECENT visit at Federal Science and
Technical College (FSTC) Yaba, Lagos, revealed that the school is undergoing slight infrastructural and human transformation.

If only government and corporate bodies would liaise with the college, the new Director/ Principal, Chris Ugoji, said the culture and excellence, which unity schools are known for, would be restored.

When The Guardian sought the view of Ugoji, who is also a Director at the Federal Ministry of Education, in his Yaba office, he said the school’s infrastructure was in a sorry state when he assumed duty, but for the intervention of Parents Teachers Association (PTA).

Worse among all are the school’s workshops, about 12 of them, which he said, are up to standard compared to those in tertiary institutions but lack electricity to power the machines.

According to Ugoji: “When I assumed duty, I didn’t like what I saw, there was total indiscipline among the students coupled with the issue of inappropriate dressing, such as flying of shirts and wearing of slippers.

All these had been tackled heavily because they are not in the culture of unity schools.
“So, as a team, we agreed it cannot be
business as usual. We decided to inform the PTA of our mission to restore discipline because where there is indiscipline, there would be chaos and where there is chaos, academic activities will suffer.

Secondly, we discovered that some students are not paying school fees, and so we have introduced measures to ensure that students pay fees and every other thing and it’s been successful so far to the glory of God.”

He continued: “We have 12 workshops in FSTC Yaba that can compete favourably with any of the universities in the country.
These workshops are used to service 19 trades, although they are very powerful, but electricity to power them is a
major challenge.

So, we are seeking for assistance/partnership to power these
machines so that the workshops can be used to teach students and also to service the need of the country in technical and vocational education.”

Ugoji further stated that in the area of
infrastructure, the PTA has helped in decking the female hostel and also installing CCTV in the college, which has helped to improve the security so far, adding: “They also assisted with
classroom furniture, water, clinic, among
others.”

However, in spite of these shortfalls, Ugoji
hinted that the students’ academic prowess still gleams. He said: “At the yearly general meeting of
Federal Unity Colleges (FUC) held at Ilorin, the score card of FUC was made available an FSTC Yaba came overall second in the area of NABTEB. We also did exceptionally well in West
African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and National Examination Council (NECO).”

To achieve the objectives of the technical
session of the school, he said: “All we need to do is revive the workshop and power the machines. We already have competent, qualified, seasoned, administrators and members of staff
who can on their own head any school in this country.

We need facilities as we lack adequate infrastructure needed to impart the right skills and knowledge in a science and technical school.”

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Global standards for teaching and learning

HEAD of School, City of Knowledge Academy (CKA), Ogun State, Abiola Lamikanra, has urged education managers in the country to
incorporate global techniques in the routine of teaching and learning in all schools.

This, she said should be in tandem with regular training of teachers in contemporary trend and practices, arguing that they are the group that transfers knowledge to the students.

Addressing reporters shortly after a facility tour at the school, located at Itanrin, Ore-Sagamu expressway, Ijebu-Ode, Lamikanra stressed that the objective of every school should be, among others, prepare students that are global in orientation and at par with their counterparts around the world.

According to her, “Teaching children about global issues is very imperative and raising a child in a 21st century requires a common sense; one century is not different from another,
the only thing that happens now is that we are more global in perspective, we are all very connected, whatever happens in Australia in one minute, the whole world knows the next minute, so to be able to get our children participate globally we have to be very active in the use of technology and this should be the target of all education managers.”

“At CKA, while grooming our students with our ethical pillars which is culture, character and confidence, we also explore other avenues.

There is a programme we call Physical, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education, where they discuss personal responsibilities and other life skills.

“We pay a lot of attention to the acquisition of life and organisational skills, time management and interpersonal relationships. There are other programmes they take in conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, and fixed mindset versus growth mindset.

All these are designed to ensure our students are well equipped to cope
with future academic requirement, they are not examination subjects, we are simply teaching them the ABC’s of this life,” she said.

She further stated that there are virtual learning platforms, where teachers engages students and parents could as well access it, urging school managers to make effective use of such platforms.

She said, “In CKA, technology is used as a tool not for decoration, when the children are in class they make effective use of the interactive board, they have their netbook with them and as the teacher is interacting with them, they are exploring the Internet together.”

On the ethical pillars of the school, she said, “Our emphasis is also on culture, character and confidence. We have explored the dimensions of character in today’s world, in terms of accountability, honesty, responsibility and leadership. Having good character is important
to us all in maintaining a good position in a society.”

“For the culture, we do not want to produce children who do not have a trace of their culture, not just their culture but to also have respect for other people’s culture. On the aspect of confidence, our children have confidence in themselves, they can go anywhere in the world and participate actively in any programme.

We build their self-esteem and that is important in educating a child in today’s world.

However, after the tour of facility, which
revealed that the school is indeed a home of knowledge, some parents of the school who were present at the school’s open day ceremony, expressed joy at the tremendous academic and infrastructural achievement of the school.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education is Crucial to Technology development

Daily, groups and individuals continue to
reiterate that unless Science, Technology,
Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education was given the deserved attention, society’s development will not happen at the pace and depth it should.

As this call for action gathers
steam, contemporary schools are continuously searching for the best solutions to make teaching and learning not only fun, but also impactful on their students, as well as help
prepare them for the rigours of higher learning.

STEM courses, experts say have proven to be very crucial to the nation’s technological advancement and mathematics, which has
historically been seen by students as an
unattractive subject is a key component of STEM education. As the scenario continues to unfold, ENO-ABASI SUNDAY reports that while the call for enhanced STEM education is upswing, proprietress of Heyday School, Lagos,
Mrs. Susan Amuta, is of the view that
knowledge of mathematics remains pivotal in the country’s advancement in science and technology.

The educationist, who said simple
steps like abacus and speed mathematics among others can help banish mathematics phobia among students, added that this explains the reason the school is paying
immense attention to the subject.
SCIENCE, the world over is primarily the bedrock for sustainable development.

In a country like Nigeria, where scientific research is hampered by a litany of factors, principal among which are
infrastructural development, dearth of funding as. well as that of facilities, the situation remains quite pathetic and calls for greater attention by relevant authorities.

In this direction, calls for greater attention to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education, remains
germane because in the final analysis, these courses have the capacity to drive the country
forward as has been the case in developed countries, even though some developed countries are yet to achieve their full potential along this line.

For instance, according to statistics, in the United States, many high-paying STEM jobs go unfilled as candidates lack necessary technical skills, training or post-secondary degrees. With
millions unemployed, this skills gap remains alarming.

In Illustrating the skills gap in America, the report titled, “The Importance of STEM
Education” said, “STEM jobs are projected to grow by 17 per cent and to produce 2.8 million new job openings. In contrast, job growth in other professions is projected to be less than 10 per cent.

According to McKinsey & Company, a
multinational management consulting firm, which conducts qualitative and quantitative analysis in order to evaluate management decisions among others, 64 per cent of
companies in America have vacancies for STEM positions due to a lack of qualified applicants.

It added that by 2020, the United States will demand 123 million highly-skilled workers, but there will only be 50 million qualified people to fill these roles.
In attempting an answer to the reason behind the inadequate supply of manpower for the
STEM jobs, the report explained that,  “Over one
fifth of all students (in America) fail to graduate with their class.

In addition to this, the United States is ranked 47th out of 144 countries in the quality of its mathematics and science education, and only eight per cent of American college students
major in engineering, while only five per cent major in computer science and mathematics.”

With revelations that STEM workers typically earn 26 per cent more than those in non-STEM positions, STEM remains a prominent focus and education policy priority of the public and
private sector in both America, Nigeria and the rest of the world.

Conscious of this shortfall, initiatives like the
“Educate to Innovate” campaign in America focuses on improving the participation and performance of America’s students in STEM with the hope of increasing American workers’ competitiveness in the next decade.

The campaign brings together leading
companies, foundations, non-profits, and
science and engineering societies, to promote initiatives such as Change the Equation,
National Lab Day, and the White House Science Fair.

From the foregoing, mathematics remains a key component in the realisation of STEM education
in any given society. That perhaps explain why the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) in 2013 came up
with the lesson planning based on modern teaching approaches for the subject.

According to NERDC, “The teaching and learning of mathematics in Nigeria is associated with
several challenges, such as the high level of deficiency in mathematical knowledge of school students. This calls for resorting to modern
approaches to teaching mathematics at the school level. The teaching of mathematics in Nigeria is characterised by the traditional
formula-based approach with emphasis on computation and little reference to mathematical reasoning and problem solving.

The body added that teaching is done
mechanically by the teacher first, presenting a formula or rule or algorithm, then solving some textbook examples, and finally giving some exercises for students to solve.

This type of teaching, it stressed was
mechanical and teacher-centered. It is obsolete since in that approach as mathematics is learned instrumentally by rote memorisation, without meaningful understanding of the concept taught.

This way, it contended,
students become frustrated in the face of
apparently meaningless symbols that are
manipulated. They regard mathematics as a static subject with a set of algorithms to be applied mechanically to carryout undertake mathematical exercises/drills.
In contrast to the traditional approach, the modern teaching approach, NERCD said is learner-centered or child-centered, and activity–based, helping the learner to develop, and construct a meaningful understanding of the mathematical concept taught.

The outfit, therefore urged participants at its workshop to focus on the constructivist forms of teaching and learning, which leads to revised beliefs about excellence in teaching and learning and about the roles of both teachers and
students in the process saying, “In this way, you get your students to learn mathematics with meaning. By so doing, the students’ educational experiences are activated developing new concepts as new knowledge is constructed.

Active participation of your students is therefore imperative for learning.”
Only recently, the African Institute for
Mathematical Sciences in realisation of the importance of this trend, said it would advocate STEM education for women and youth in Africa to drive socio-economic development.

In her September 2014 address at the 3rd
Annual African First Ladies Discussion on
Science, Technology, Engineering and
Mathematics (STEM), Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Dr. Nkosazanna Dlamini
Zuma, had in similar vein stated categorically that African development will not happen at the pace and depth it needs to without the empowerment of girls, youth and women, especially in the STEM areas.

She emphasised that the development of skills in these areas is needed “to modernise agriculture and agro-processing; to build,
expand and maintain our infrastructure;to
develop manufacturing and add value to our natural resources and to mitigate and adapt to
climate change.” Proprietress of Heyday School, Lagos, Mrs
Suzan Amuta, is bothered that even at this point where global emphasis is shifting to STEM
courses, Nigeria is still recording less than 50 per cent pass rate in mathematics in the two
major national external examinations for
secondary school students- the West African Examination Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) organised by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the
one organised by the Minna, Niger State-based National Examination Council (NECO).

On what this unhealthy development portends for the future of the nation and how to set the country on the right rail, Mrs Amuta said
teacher training in the sciences as well as introduction and sustenance of vocational training were of great importance.

Her words, “We can fix this by training
teachers in the sciences, introduction and
sustenance of vocational training, guidance and counselling and by lowering entry requirements for science courses.

The last point is
particularly interesting to me as I have always wondered why the entry requirements for the sciences were so stringent.

“Take for example the requirement that a
student who desires to study the sciences must also possess a credit level pass in English
Language.

The student has five credits in the
core sciences and yet the qualifying authorities insist that without a credit pass in English Language, the student cannot study his/her
course of choice in the sciences. You then wonder in which language the student wrote the
examinations and got credit level pass in at least five subjects.

The proprietress continued, “That is just an instance of the dysfunctional nature of Nigeria’s assessment process. Our education system and curriculum need continuous evaluation to bring
it up to speed with the changing times.

Education should be engaging, interesting and fun so students are able to visualise and indeed live the subjects that they are taught; see how the subjects correlate to everyday living, and there will likely be improvement in the attitude and pass rate in mathematics and the sciences.

Without a strong focus on the sciences,
Nigeria’s quest to become a developed nation via industrialisation will not be achievable.”

At a micro level, Amuta said the school was taking some steps to improve students’ performance in mathematics.

For instance, “At the pre-school stage, we
make the children active in mathematics
through the use of real objects and activities that emerge from the children through music, arts and craft, sorting by colour and size, matching pictures to objects and arranging pictures in correct sequence.

This is to help the children progress from concrete experiences to
more abstract ones and to internalise
mathematical concepts naturally in order to eliminate memorisation.

“At the primary school level, we organise
mathematics quizzes and inter-class
competitions. Mental mathematics, such as abacus and speed mathematics, are taught for
mental alertness and intuitive thinking.

We also make mathematics fun for the children through games, mathematical songs and one-to-one teaching.”

Seeing how important mathematics is in laying a solid foundation that would facilitate excelling in the sciences, Amuta said, “Mathematics should be made real to the children through concrete experiences, basic concepts such as
one-to-one correspondence and classification equivalence.

In addition, we introduced a reward
system for mathematics skills and scholarship for students who excel in mathematics.”

She continued, “It is not a single-incentive package; a mix of incentives help to engage the interest of students from different angles and levels. What may appeal to one student, another
student may not find it as engaging.

However, having a potpourri of incentives help to ensure
that all the students are engaged and also boost teachers ability to engender and retain the interest of the students in mathematics.”

Commenting on which method or device
among the mixed bag of incentives was
particularly helpful in improving pupils’
mathematics skills at this level of education, she said, “A remarkable method that we have been using and which has made mathematics easier for the children is the abacus training
programme.

It has removed the fear of mathematics from the students and empowered them to calculate large numbers without the aid of an electronic calculator. Indeed, adopting abacus solutions in our bid to enhance our students’ love and appreciation for mathematics, has been very effective as a tool.

“The introduction of abacus training programme has brought about a remarkable growth in the
interest and ability of our students in
mathematics.

This has rubbed off on other subjects since a strong interest in one subject
naturally helps students maintain interest in other subjects.

“Abacus mathematics has improved the logical and analytical minds of the children. It has also improved and sharpened other skills like vigilance, spatial relation, listening skills,
creativity, memory power, patience and
precision. It has made them resilient, confident and has given them the ‘I can’ attitude.

As I mentioned earlier, it rubs off on other subjects because if you are very good in one subject, there is a tendency to transfer that ability to
other subjects. What we are seeing is that the strong interest in mathematics has naturally enhanced their interest in other subjects.

She revealed that, “One of abacus’ most
important qualities is enhancing the pace at which students can reason logically. Imagineempowering a student with the ability to
calculate numbers and solve equations at a
speed faster than electronic calculators.

Though
that ability will be more noticeable and indeed
useful in mathematics, it is naturally transferred
to other subjects; the students can think faster
and are able to find solutions to problems in
other subjects at a faster rate than they were
used to.”

Questioned abacus should be made part of the
education system by concerned bodies, she
retorted, “I would encourage schools to embrace
the idea of abacus programme and recommend
it to others. At Heyday School, we have
benefited immensely from the method in the
sense that it has helped to remove the chore
and fear our children had for the subject.

The Children now look forward to mathematics
classes with enthusiasm because abacus makes
the learning of mathematics fun, easy and
enjoyable.”

Drawing from her personal experience, Amuta
said growing up, “There was a general phobia
for mathematics, which precluded students who
would have developed a keen interest in the
subject from following through. I must say that I
did not love mathematics because of that
general apathy towards it at the time. We
recognised that there was apathy towards
mathematics at the very early stage, even
before our school was founded. This is why our
vision is to make sure we remove the fear of
mathematics from our students and equip them
with the knowledge, skills and principles that
would make the subject interesting and fun.

Asked to enumerate the challenges of
administering a school in Nigeria from her
prism, she said, “There were several challenges
in schools administration in Nigeria. Chief
among them are inadequate funding, which
impedes the ability of schools to provide the
infrastructure and services that they would
ideally like to provide in order to give students
the best environment to enhance their scholarly
abilities.

“Another is in keeping pace with the ever
changing needs of information and
communication technology, (ICT), which as you
know changes at a rapid pace. ICT has become
an integral part of education, helping to make
teaching-learning not only fun and interesting,
but also ensuring that the vast amount of
knowledge that students and teachers can
possibly tap into is limitless.

“The third challenge is inadequate number of
teachers ,and when they are available, their
skills set is not up to date. When teachers
graduate from their various institutions, they no
longer go straight to the classrooms to start
teaching. You’d have to invest resources in
terms of time and funds to train them, scale up
their skills in order for them to be fit for
purpose. I could go on and on.

But in spite of these challenges, the education system is not a lost cause, particularly with the intervention of
private sector education providers. Some
schools have done particularly well in providing the required facilities and trained instructors, and it shows in the quality of the students that they produce.”

Outstanding Teachers being Honoured

In keeping with its tradition in every January, the Corona Schools has celebrated its teaching and non-teaching staff who have demonstrated extra ordinary commitment to accomplishing the mission of the school.

The occasion featured various forms of
entertainment by the staff and climaxed with giving award to different categories of workers. The most outstanding is the Model Teacher of the Year Award.

In the 2014 edition, Mr. Innocent Oaikhena won the Corona Model Teacher of the Year Award in the secondary category; Mrs Oluwatosin Balogun, Corona Model Teacher, Elementary;
and Mrs Naomi Izakpa, Corona Model Nursery Teacher.

Narrating the teaching methodology that gave them the edge over their colleagues, Oaikhena stated that for adequate learning to take place, teachers must see their students as projects which must commence with solid foundation,
well floored, erected and monitored to a
complete structure.

“For effective teaching to take place, teachers must see their students as projects, like the engineering designs and set up a structure.

Your students, their happiness and their success is your project. So if any student doesn’t do well, if any student is sad, and I’m there as a teacher without any significant impact, it then means I am failing in my project.

“Also, you must act like a teenager to be able to work with these students. Most of the things they go through, we have passed through them before and as adults, we should try to guide them right without condemnation. That is why
you are there as a teacher, if they knew
everything, they will probably not be in school,” he explained

For Izakpa, who has been teaching in the
school for 17 years, every teacher in Corona is good, very dedicated, hardworking and loyal.

“But for me to have won this award, it means greater work and commitment, because getting the children to understand what you are teaching them at that formation age requires strategic action.

“Nursery education is a level where pupils have to gain background knowledge, and so it is a point of duty for a teacher to bring the lesson to their level and ensure they understand the right thing. A teacher at this point should be very careful so as not to inculcate the wrong learning or culture into the pupils.”

Balogun, on her part, informed that her passion for teaching has been a strong drive.

“I love teaching right from when I was in school, I studied Geology and I used to teach my course mates who call me professor. I also have passion for children. The fact that I love Mathematics, and I realised most children have phobia for mathematics, I looked for creative ways to make it real fun, as much fun as possible because what you love you want to do it over and over again.”

Earlier, the Chief Executive Officer of the
school, Mrs. Olufunto Igun, said Corona is
endowed with people of diverse strength and skills drawn together by a common passion which, according to her, is the education of a total child.

“This strength of ours has continuously made our school to remain very relevant in the education sector. This year, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of this great institution, the journey so far has been remarkable. We are not just known to deliver world class education, we
have carved a niche for ourselves in the industry and this is by no means a task achieved by a few individuals, rather by everyone.”

She stressed that the award was designed to reward and recognise deserving staff who, during the past school year, took advantage of
the immense opportunities within the system and excelled by sustaining their professionalism, creativity, commitment, ethics and self- development.

Written by Ujunwa Atueyi

Nigerian students should be competitive with peers anywhere

FROM the Administator of the Grace High
School, Gbagada, Lagos, Mrs. Tokunboh Edun, came an admonition that the content of education in Nigeria should always be in line with the realities in the international scene.

Speaking at an interactive with parents and some old students of the school, Edun said schools have a responsibility to ensure that their students do not miss opportunities that can put them in a position to favourably compete with
their counterparts anywhere around the globe.

Responding to a question on why her school decided to teach Chinese language since the children are already learning English and French, she said: “On the decision to introduce mandarin as a subject, we discovered that in Europe and America, Chinese language is
gaining more recognition because of the growing importance of China in world trade and politics.

It is in line with international standard that we decided to introduce Chinese language. Some people have been wondering how many foreign
languages our children will have to learn.

But I do not think the children will loose anything if they learn English, French and Chinese. It does not prevent them from learning our indigenous languages. All we want is a situation where our student can compete with their peers all around the world. This is part of views that education
should promote global peace.”

According to her, “We have four Chinese on the staff now.  We also work with the Confucius Institute at the University of Lagos. You can see that one of our special guests during the graduation ceremony was Professor Lirong
Jiang, Co-Director, Confucing Institute,
University of Lagos who has been working with us to promote teaching of Chinese language at Grace high School.”

On how the government can actually transform the education sector, she said the shortest way to achieve success in that regard is to vote more money to the area.

“If you have been following closely issues in the education sector, especially at the
secondary and tertiary levels, you will see that inadequate funding is a major issue.

That is why stakeholders have been calling on government to increase funding on education.

I believe that we can do more for education in this country. So my suggestion is that the Federal Government should lead the way by improving funding of education.”

Edun explained the Grace Osinowo Football Competition organised recently for the colleges in Lagos ands why it is an annual event.

“Really, the annual Deaconess Grace Osinowo Football Competition is to honour my late mother who founded Grace Schools over 40 years ago. The school management decided to create a way of remembering her legacies and
also keep the children positively engaged.

That was why we thought of a popular thing among children. And we have seen that the students love soccer. Also, late Deaconess Grace Osinowo was a lover of sports. Right from the beginning
sports development has been very prominent in the school and the competition is a confirmation
of that,” she said.

Remedy mass failure in JAMB, UTME

IN a bid to address the increasing rate of mass failure in national examinations in the country, using Information and Communication Technology (ICT), the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has cut
a partnership pact with two indigenous software companies, Cinfores Limited and WaveTek Nigeria Limited.

The partnership was consummated at the
weekend, when the agency witnessed the
signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with WaveTek and Cinfores Limited on the deployment of a special version of Nigeria is foremost e-learning and examination preparatory software.

The special version, which is customised for the forthcoming 2015 Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB)/Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) is referred as JAMB Brainfriend.
Speaking on the development, the Director General of NITDA, Mr. Peter Jack, said the agency keyed into the initiative as part of its effort to deepen and encourage local content development in education and other sectors of the economy as mandated by the Act setting up the agency.

Based on the transformation agenda of Mr. President, the Federal Government of Nigeria is doing everything possible to ensure that the Nigerian educational system is improved and made world class.

1. There is certain decline in quality of education in our country. The mass failure in UTME and other national examinations in recent years, as a case in point, is a mixture of many things
including the non-availability of quality local resources to change the tide of mass failure and exam malpractice that has plagued the nation,

2. he said: The NITDA boss also stated that NITDA as an IT agency is committed to transforming every sector in the country through the introduction of ICT.

He pointed out that in its various effort to
ensure qualitative education in the country, NITDA would engage various local and international organisations to develop locally adapted solutions that will meet the needs of the sector.

He added that the agency would do everything possible, within its disposal, to support the partnership between the two companies.

In his remarks, the Managing Director of
Cinfores Limited, Mr. Asawo Ibifuro, said the software companies decided to introduce the examination software, Jamb BrainFriend to arm Nigerian students to be better prepared for the
forth coming JAMB examination.

Asawo, who frowned at the increasing rate of failure of students in UTME, said the software company, is committed to helping the students and exam candidates to adequately prepare and pass their various educational examinations by developing the customized version that would help them overcome any kind of questions that come their way.

He also noted that the software, apart from arming the students for their exams, would also prepare them and erase any phobia or myths surrounding the electronic JAMB examination, which is taking off this year.”

He, however, assured the candidates that the software would definitely help them in
minimizing the high rate of failure in forth-coming JAMB exams if it is effectively utilised.

On his part, the Managing Director of WaveTek Nigeria Limited, Mr. Ken Spann, said the two companies realized the danger of examination mass failure in Nigeria, a reason he said informed the development of JAMB BrainFriend software to cater for the challenge of mass failure in UTME, which was above 75 per cent in 2014.

Spann who had earlier spent about 11 years promoting Microsoft Education via Microsoft IT Academies at Microsoft USA and Nigeria respectively, further enthused that, “Through WaveTek’s strong network in education, we are collaborating with Cinfores as their marketing partner and ensuring that BrainFriend is used by
the over 1.4 million candidates registered for JAMB UTME scheduled for March, 2015”.

The software can be accessed at every JAMB form selling point across the country and it will also be available at all the NITDA digital centres across the country, to enable the candidates access the software.

Please, Increase funds for Scientific Research

THE Federal Government has been urged to
increase funding for scientific research in the
country, to keep pace with advancement in other
parts of the world.

A professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the
University of Abuja, Prof. Joseph Nwafor
Nwabueze stated this at the 12th Inaugural
lecture of the institution titled: “Igwe Na Ndu:
The role of metals in life.”
Prof. Nwabueze implored the government to
stop paying lip services to science and
technology but rather make available special
intervention funds to universities to adequately
equip their basic science departments for
teaching and research.

Nwabueze noted that the state of science
research in Nigeria is deplorable because of lack
of modern research facilities, which he described
as twin problems of lack of infrastructures and
poor funding.

“ Everybody agrees that science primarily is the
bedrock of sustainable development. Scientific
research in Nigeria is being hindered by the twin
problem of infrastructure and poor funding.
“The laboratories are without chemical and
research equipment. Municipal services that are
taken for granted in other climes are lacking.

The lecturer said well-equipped advanced
science laboratories should be established, at
least one in each geopolitical zone which should
have sophisticated research equipment.
Nwabueze commended the Academic Staff
Union of Universities (ASUU) for its “sustained
struggle for better funding of the university.

The former deputy vice-chancellor academic,
also cautioned the federal government against
politicising the opening of new federal
universities in the country.
He said if the federal government could not
adequately fund 24 universities, how does it
hope to fund 37.

He maintained that the resources used in
creating the 13 universities should have been
used to expand and adequately fund the existing
ones.

“I do not believe that universities should be
established for political reasons. Why must
there be a university in each state of the
federation, even in those states that hardly fill
their quota in existing federal institutions?” he
said.

According to him the increase in the number of
federal universities has further worsened the
situation of underfunding in the education sector
in the country.

“If this trend is not halted, we may soon be
confronted with demands for the establishment
of a federal university in each of the 774 local
government councils.

Written by Kanayo Umeh

http://m.ngrguardiannews.com

N133m debt delays Cross River's SSCE results (WAEC )

FOR over a year, the West African Examination
Council, (WAEC) has withheld the May/June
2013/2014 SSSE results of students in Cross
Rivers State following the state’s inability to
complete payment of its statutory examination
fees.

Following this development, students in the
state cannot process their admission documents
into various higher institutions in the country
and the Labourt Party (LP) in the state has
decried the situation as “embarrassing and
unacceptable” accusing the People’s Democratic
Party (PDP) led government in the state of
being insensitive to education and the plight of
Cross Riverians.

Addressing a rally of massive supporters of LP
in Ikom on Monday, the party’s Senatorial
candidate for Cross River Central, Dr. Sandy
Onor described the development as very
frustrating to both students and their parents,
noting that “children wrote WAEC since last year
and till today, they have not seen their results
because the government in Cross River has
deliberately refused to pay WAEC.

“Why should government be the one thwarting
educational progress of our young ones? The
same government that claims to be bankrupt
and cannot pay token for students’ results to be
released is the same government spending
billions of Naira to conduct simple party
primaries.

“Our state is no more the cleanest in the
country because dirt has taken over. Salaries
are owed and people are suffering. Where are
we heading? We have come to liberate Cross
Rivers from slavery.”

One of the affected students who simply gave
her name as Mary, said, “this government is not
sensitive to our plight. Imagine how they are
making us suffer. I know if it was a political
matter that affects them the government will
immediately rush and get money to pay.
“ I have admission into the university, but
without the SSSE result to present, I cannot go
anywhere. Please the government should come
to our rescue because this is not healthy for us
and the state”.

The State’s Commissioner for Education,
Professor Offiong Offiong admitted that the
state was “owing WAEC N133 million and we
have paid them N108 million and the balance is
N25 million which the Accountant General says
he is making efforts to pay. So that is the
situation”.
The LP has accused the PDP led government in
the state of not giving priority to education but
Professor Offiong said, “I cannot comment on
that and I am not the one that controls the
treasury of the state. I don’t know where they
(LP) are getting their information but I think
that everybody in the state has seen that even
salaries have been delayed. The thing did not
start now. It is a problem that has been trailing
us for up to a period of one year now. The
politics is just starting in the last one month or
two. So this problem has been with us for some
time now”.

For the students who are disturbed, he said,
“we have appealed to them through the Parents
Teachers Association (PTA), through their
principals because this is a matter that is
beyond the Ministry. The state is passing
through some serious financial crisis, which
calls for understanding by everybody. It is
rather unfortunate, that is the last thing we
would have expected to happen to our schools
at this time, but be it as it may, we are hoping
that we will resolve that this week”.

Written by Anietie Akpan,

http://m.ngrguardiannews.com

10 things you must not say to your Single friends!

1. Don’t talk crap on your single friends’ exes.  Here’s the deal: We loved them. Even when they were terrible guys. Just like you love your husband, the guy we would never talk bad about even when he messes up. There is a time and place for your real opinion. We’ll let you know when that is.

2. Don’t tell your single friends it’s about being content. Most of the world gets married. You got married. Especially in Christian American circles, marriage starts fairly young and as hard as it is to go without it at times, it’s much worse when someone makes you feel guilty for wanting it.

Please be careful not to imply that we should feel content with God either. All we take away is that in addition to being single, we are also doing a terrible job following Jesus.

There is room in the Christian life to be sad. There is room to be frustrated. We are often so quick to rush people into being okay that we make them feel it’s wrong to be anything short of content.

3. Don’t compare your single friends’ adult relationships to your high school or college ones.  We understand you dated him for four-plus years. We’re sure it was meaningful.

No one is saying it’s not. But adult relationships and teenage ones are different ball games. Adult relationships typically start out on a serious foot. If we break up, it isn’t just about taking down a few sorority dance pictures; we are breaking up with an entire future. The wedding, the house, and the growing old together that we most likely talked about with our ex will never come to pass. Nearly every friend I’ve walked through an adult breakup with has turned to me at some point and said, “I feel like I’m going through a divorce.”

4. Please don’t complain in front of your single friends about having to have sex with your husband.  Save that for your married friends. One friend wrote, “If you want to have an honest conversation about how your expectations for sex have changed, by all means, share. We absolutely care about that. But don’t make flippant comments on how put out you are by your active sex life. Some of us are holding on by the skin of our teeth here!”

5. Don’t call your single friends at 10:00 a.m. and ask them if they’re awake yet. We’re single, not children. Please don’t forget to ask us for advice on finances or business. We still have life experience outside of relationship experience. Also, don’t always give us the back seat or the pullout couch on vacation while the marrieds take the beds. We all like a good mattress. And you know it.

6. Remember that you don’t understand what it’s like to be alone at this age.  If we come to you hurting, venting, or complaining, please don’t find a way to work in the fact that you think we should be happy. (Unless we’ve done it a hundred times and need to snap out of it. We need a good kick every once in awhile too.) Doing everything by ourselves that we thought we’d do with a spouse can be rough at times.

A lady at my church asked me once if she could pray for me. I had just ended my relationship with Jake and quit my job (because I thought I would be moving to where he was).

I tried to explain to her that I had no idea how to rebuild my life at this point. I had no direction and no one to tie me down somewhere. She listened and began her prayer this way: “Lord, please help Cindy to see the beauty in her opportunity and independence. Help her to see that people would kill for her freedom and to be thankful.”

At that time, I’d had enough freedom. I wanted to settle down with someone. Being single doesn’t always feel like opportunity. Some days it feels like being lost and behind. Even with a full social life of friends and family, the truth is we eat most meals alone. We drive alone, come home to an empty house, and put our suitcases in the overhead storage compartment all by ourselves. If you’re married, you most likely don’t live that way.

I know there are busy moms who would kill for some alone time. There are married people who would love the luxury of a trip with girlfriends. I get (in theory) that having kids and a spouse is stressful, hard work, and a ton of responsibility. It’s probably good and bad depending on the day. The same goes for being single. It isn’t perfect on either side.

7. Don’t set two single Christian friends up just because they are both Christian. If our only common denominators are single and religion, stop yourself. Please use some judgment when orchestrating these setups.

8. Don’t forget to set your single friends up.  Married friends will often say, “I know someone you have to meet! You would be perfect together.” And then that’s the last anyone ever hears of it. Don’t be fooled; we are totally reliant on you to get that ball rolling. Make the phone call, organize the BBQ, send them the number! If it’s someone you truly think is a good fit, we’ll be grateful. And even toast you at the wedding... if  you actually come through.

9a. Don’t make your single friends’ love life, or lack thereof, the most pressing thing to inquire about every time you see them.  (As though everything else in our lives is subpar.) One friend wrote, “I often get random, little encouraging cards from my married friends saying, ‘I don’t know why you haven’t found someone, but know that I’m praying for Mr. Right to come soon.’ I don’t really appreciate this. I mean, thank you for praying, but I’m also concerned with finding a career, mentoring high school girls, and navigating healthy relationships with my crazy retired parents who may kill each other if I don’t check in on them every week! Since you’re already praying, could you add those to the top of the list?”

When our married friends make our dating lives the center of attention, we sense pity. We wonder why the other parts of our lives don’t matter as much as this one area we can’t control.

I imagine it would feel the same if we asked only about your baby and never about you. Yes, the baby is taking up most of your attention, but you are still valuable in other ways.

9b. Don’t ask your single friends for detailed updates about their relationships and not be honest about your marriage. For some reason, everyone and their mother feels they can ask about my dating life. If I have a boyfriend at the time, they immediately want to know how it’s going and when we are getting married. Look, if I’m not telling you I’m engaged, it’s probably something he and I are carefully sorting through. I’d prefer not to go around blabbing about it. And unfortunately it would be wildly inappropriate for me to return the inquiry with, “How’s your marriage going?” I may as well ask, “How are your finances? How’s your diet? How often are you two having sex?” Off limits.

Sharing details communicates a level of friendship and trust. With our close married friends, single people want to be confided in with equal vulnerability. If you aren’t going to ante up, don’t ask us to just so you can be in the loop or give us your two cents. I’ve had converations that look like this:

Married friend presses for details. I provide details. Married friend gives advice. I listen and try to think of how to explain my side without being rude. Married friend continues with advice. I’m quiet and hopefully polite. Conversation ends.

Whether they’ve been married exactly thirteen days or this is their first serious relationship and my fifth, I’m always the student in the situation. It’s not a great climate for growing a friendship, as you can imagine.

10. Don’t count your single friends out as aunties!  We may not have the baby skills on lockdown, but we do care. We do want to be at important milestones, buy baby clothes, and one day tell your kids college stories about you that you’d prefer we didn’t share. We do want to have dinner at your house with the family (and then grab a drink after you put them to bed).

11. Don’t assume every single person is looking for a relationship.  I would argue that deep down, 97 percent are looking. (This is not a real statistic; I completely made it up on my own.) Still, the 3 percent who don’t want a relationship do matter, and it’s important to know where a friend stands. Don’t be quick to put your expectations on them. There are seasons when I’m open to dating and seasons when I say no because I’m excited about investing in other things. It’s best to ask where we are as opposed to jumping to your own conclusion.

In summation, all people, married and single, want to feel like their stage of life is okay. We all want to feel like we are on the right track. It can hurt to feel like everyone is waiting, prodding, expecting, or feeling bad about the way your life is going. This tends to come out in the way we talk to each other. It’s important for both sides to listen and to kindly choose our words carefully.

By Cindy Johnson

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Cool Facts in History

Do you Know that:

Writing in ancient Greece hadnospacebetweenthewords

Women who use their appearance as a basis for
self-worth tend to post more photos of themselves online

The more stressed you are, the slower your wounds & illnesses heal

There is a Greek god named Priapus
..He has an enormous permanent boner.

Happy people prefer to have deeper conversations

Being racist can b detrimental to your health

U can write "property" using the top row of keyboard

Most smart students don't help the struggling ones

Phasmophobia, the fear of ghosts

Men find it easier to approach a women for a sexual encounter if she has a tattoo

2/3 of humans have no idea what they're good at or what their strengths are

Kanye West has more grammys than The Beatles, The Black Eyed Peas & Daft Punk combined

What u wear has an effect on how u behave

A group of barracudas is called a battery
& A group of giraffes, a tower.

Cyclists go 70s faster if they have shaved legs

Smiling is 69% more attractive than wearing makeup

Gossiping helps lower stress

A group of pandas is called an "embarrassment"
& A group of flies, a "business"

There's a volcano in Indonesia, it spews blue lava

Girls beat boys in educational achievement in 70% of the world

It's easier to remember things with your eyes closed.

More facts here

Help your Students Succeed

Teachers who transform lives understand not only how to teach curriculum, but also how children develop into capable, caring, and engaged adults.

They see beyond quantitative measurements of success to the core abilities that help students live healthy, productive lives.

Famous educator Maria Montessori wisely remarked, "The greatest sign of success for a teacher. . . is to be able to say, 'The children are now working as if I
did not exist.'" The world has changed dramatically since the early 1900s when Montessori made her mark in education.

Yet the same goal remains: scaffolding children toward self-sufficiency. How does this occur today, particularly when test results often seem more
important than the development of a child ready to tackle career-life challenges?

In a nutshell, it happens when we understand how children and teens successfully mature to adulthood and how we impact their growth in key developmental areas. Based on decades of research in child and adolescent development, neuroscience, education, and psychology, we know that relationships with teachers, parents, and other supportive adults determine how
school-age children acquire their personal guidance systems, full of interconnected abilities and pathways to success.

When we envision those abilities as an
internal compass, it's easy to see how education and development go hand in hand -- how children navigate successfully through school and life.

A framework for understanding why kids need these interconnected abilities and how they're nurtured in different contexts, it's also a call to act on behalf of children who deserve to live full, meaningful lives beyond external measures of success.

Is the first in a series of nine posts on how teachers develop these internal abilities in the classroom. Each month, we'll take a deeper dive into one of these eight compass attributes:

Curiosity

Curiosity is the ability to seek and acquire new knowledge, skills, and ways of understanding the world. It is at the heart of what motivates kids to learn and what keeps them learning throughout their lives. Curiosity facilitates engagement, critical thinking, and reasoning. We nurture children's curiosity and other life-long learning skills when we encourage them to identify and seek answers to questions that pique their
interests. When we help them recognize failure as an opportunity for exploration, we encourage experimentation and discovery.

We help them understand the tenets of engaged learning when we recognize the different ways they explore -- touching,
tasting, climbing, smelling, etc. -- and praise them for their perseverance in finding answers. When we show
them how parts connect and influence the whole of society, they discover that curiosity improves relationships, fuels innovation, and drives social change.

Sociability

Sociability is the joyful, cooperative ability to engage with others. It derives from a collection of social- emotional skills that help children understand and express feelings and behaviors in ways that facilitate positive relationships, including active listening, self- regulation, and effective communication.

We impact children's sociability when we help them understand that the words they choose make a difference to the relationships they create.

When we teach them that every social interaction is tied to an emotional reaction, we help them avoid impulsive behavior and think through difficult situations before acting. We also build their capacity for collaborative teamwork.

Resilience

Resilience is the ability to meet and overcome challenges in ways that maintain or promote well- being. It incorporates attributes like grit, persistence, initiative, and determination.

We build resilience when we push students gently to the edges of their intellectual, emotional, social, and physical comfort zones. Our support and
encouragement as they take risks, overcome challenges, and grow from failure helps them learn to bounce back from life's ups and downs.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to examine and understand who we are relative to the world around us. It's developed through skills like self-reflection, meaning making, and honing core values and beliefs. It's situated at "true south" on the compass to symbolize that introspection is about looking into ourselves.

Self-awareness impacts children's capacity to see themselves as uniquely different from other people.

We stimulate students' self-awareness when we engage them in reflective conversations about values, beliefs, attitudes, and moral dilemmas.

By encouraging them to understand and attend to their intellectual, emotional, social, and physical selves, we let them know that we value their full human
potential.

Integrity

Integrity is the ability to act consistently with the values, beliefs, and principles that we claim to hold. It's about courage, honesty, and respect in one’s daily
interactions -- and doing the right thing even when no one is watching.

We shape children's integrity by treating them with respect and dignity, and listening to their feelings and concerns without judgment. When we praise students for demonstrating their values, beliefs, and principles through actions, we remind them of their value as ethical human beings, beyond a grade or test score.

Resourcefulness

Resourcefulness is the ability to find and use available resources to achieve goals, problem solve, and shape the future. It draws on skills like planning, goal setting, strategic thinking, and organizing.

We encourage students to be resourceful when we set high expectations and support them to accomplish their goals. When we teach them to be strategic
thinkers and adaptable problem solvers, they learn to live without rigid rules or preconceived ideas.

Creativity

Creativity is the ability to generate and communicate original ideas and appreciate the nature of beauty. It
fosters imagination, innovation, and a sense of aesthetics.

We inspire creativity when we encourage young people to express themselves through writing, poetry, acting, photography, art, digital media, unstructured play, etc. When we notice and praise them for thinking outside the box and taking risks, their imaginations blossom.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to recognize, feel, and respond to the needs and suffering of others. It facilitates the expression of caring, compassion, and kindness. It's
situated at "true north" on the compass to symbolize the outward impact of educating young citizens committed to creating a just, sustainable world.

We influence children's abilities to care for others beyond themselves by creating meaningful relationships with them, ensuring that they are seen, felt, and understood regardless of how they learn.

When we expose them to different worldviews, engage them with community projects, and bring service learning into the classroom, we develop greater empathy and compassion.

The Compass Advantage views education and child development as integrated processes nurtured through
the collaborative efforts of parents, teachers, and out- of-school programs. When we attend to the development of these eight abilities, the results are
transformative.

Not only do children become lifelong
learners, they become what Maria Montessori envisioned -- self-sufficient navigators of their own
lives.

By: Marilyn Price-Mitchell PhD
Developmental Psychologist,
Researcher, Writer

www.edutopia.org/blog

Teaching an Entirely New Topic

When presented with new material, standards, and
complicated topics, we need to be focused and calm
as we approach our assignments. We can use brain
breaks and focused-attention practices to positively
impact our emotional states and learning.

They refocus our neural circuitry with either stimulating or
quieting practices that generate increased activity in
the prefrontal cortex, where problem solving and
emotional regulation occur.

Brain Breaks

A brain break is a short period of time when we
change up the dull routine of incoming information
that arrives via predictable, tedious, well-worn
roadways.

Our brains are wired for novelty because
we pay attention to any and every stimulus in our
environment that feels threatening or out of the
ordinary. This has always been a wonderful advantage
because our survival as a species depended on this
aspect of brain development.

When we take a brain break, it refreshes our thinking
and helps us discover another solution to a problem
or see a situation through a different lens. Consider
trying these with your class:

1. The Junk Bag

I always carry a bag of household objects containing
markers, scrap paper, and anything that one would
find in a junk drawer -- for example, a can opener or
a pair of shoelaces. Pick any object out of the junk
bag and ask students to come up with two ways this
object could be reinvented for other uses. They can
write or draw their responses. Once students have
drawn or written about an invention, they can walk
the room for one minute sharing and comparing.

2. Squiggle Story

On a blank sheet of paper, whiteboard, or
Promethean Board, draw one squiggly line. Give
students one minute to stand and draw with their
opposite hand, turning the line into a picture or
design of their choice.

3. Opposite Sides

Movement is critical to learning. Have students stand
and blink with the right eye while snapping the fingers
of their left hand. Repeat this with the left eye and
right hand. Students could also face one another and
tap the right foot once, left foot twice, and right foot
three times, building speed they alternate toe tapping
with their partner.

4. Symbolic Alphabet

Sing the alphabet with names of objects rather than
the letters.

5. Other Languages

Teach sign language or make up a spoken language.
In pairs, students take turns speaking or interpreting
this new language for 30 seconds each.

6. Mental Math

Give a set of three instructions, counting the sequence
to a partner for 30 seconds. Example: Count by two
until 20, then count by three until 50, finishing with
seven until 80. Switch and give the other partner
another set of numbers to count.

7. Invisible Pictures

Have a student draw a picture in the air while their
partner guesses what it is. You could give them
categories such as foods, places, or other ways to
narrow the guessing.

8. Story Starters
A student or teacher begins a story for one minute,
either individually or with a partner. The students then
complete or continue it with a silly ending.

9. Rock Scissors Paper Math
With the traditional game, the last call-out is "math."
With that call, students lay out one, two, three, or four
fingers in the palm of their hand. The best of three
wins.

Focused-Attention Practices

A focused-attention practice is a brain exercise for
quieting the thousands of thoughts that distract and
frustrate us each day. When the mind is quiet and
focused, we are able to be present with a specific
sound, sight, or taste.

Research repeatedly shows
that quieting our minds ignites our parasympathetic
nervous system, reducing heart rate and blood
pressure while enhancing our coping strategies to
effectively handle the day-to-day challenges that keep
coming. Our thinking improves and our emotions
begin to regulate so that we can approach an
experience with variable options.

For the following practices, the goal is to start with
60 to 90 seconds and build to five minutes:

1. Breathing
Use the breath as a focus point. Have students place
one hand close to their nose (not touching) and one
hand on their belly. As they breathe in, have them feel
their bellies expand. As they exhale, they can feel the
warm air hit their hand. Students will focus on this
breath for only one minute. Let them know that it's
OK when thoughts sometimes come into the mind
uninvited. Tell them to exhale that thought away.

2. Colors
Visualize colors while focusing on the breath. Inhale a
deep green, and exhale a smoky gray. Have the
students imagine the colors as swirling and alive with
each inhale. If a student is de-escalating from an
angry moment, the color red is a great color to
exhale.

3. Movement
For younger children, direct students to stand and, as
they inhale, lift an arm or leg and wiggle it, exhaling it
back to its original position. For younger grades
beginning these focused-attention practices, it's good
to include an inhale and exhale with any type of
movement.

4. The Deep-Dive Breath
We inhale for four counts, hold for four, and exhale
slowly for four counts. You can increase the holding of
breath by a few seconds once the students find the
rhythm of the exercise.

5. Energizing Breath
We pant like a dog with our mouths open and our
tongues out for 30 seconds, continuing for another 30
seconds with our mouths closed as we take short
belly breaths with one hand on the belly. We typically
take three energizing pant breaths per second. After a
full minute, the students return to four regular deep
inhales and exhales.

6. Sound
The use of sound is very powerful for engaging a calm
response. In the three classrooms where I teach, we
use rain sticks, bells, chimes, and music. There are
many websites that provide music for focus, relaxation
and visualization. Here is one of my favorites .

7. Rise and Fall
As we breathe in and out through our noses, we can
lie on the floor and place an object on our stomachs,
enhancing our focus by watching the rising and falling
of our bellies.

When we are focused and paying attention to our
thoughts, feelings and choices, we have a much
greater opportunity to change those thoughts and
feelings that are not serving us well in life and in
school. When we grasp this awareness, we see and
feel the difference!

How do you stimulate or quiet your students?

Courtesy: http://www.edutopia.org/blog

A Great Teacher

What does it mean to be a great teacher?

Of course credentials, knowledge, critical thinking, and all
other faculties of intelligence are important.

However, a great teacher should be much more
than credentials, experience and intelligence.
What lies in the heart of a great teacher?

You are kind:

a great teacher shows kindness to
students, colleagues, parents and those around
her/him. My favourite saying is “kindness makes
the world go around”. It truly changes the
environment in the classroom and school.
Being a
kind teacher helps students feel welcomed, cared
for and loved.

You are compassionate:

Teaching is a very
humanistic profession, and compassion is the
utmost feeling of understanding, and showing
others you are concerned about them. A
compassionate teacher models that characteristic
to the students with her/his actions, and as a
result students will be more open to
understanding the world around them.

You are empathetic:

Empathy is such an
important trait to have and to try to develop in
ourselves and our students. Being able to put
yourself in someone’s shoes and see things from
their perspective can have such a powerful impact
on our decisions and actions.

You are positive:

Being a positive person, is not
an easy task. Being a positive teacher is even
harder when we’re always met with problems with
very limited solutions. However, staying positive
when it’s tough can have such a tremendous
positive impact on the students and everyone
around us. Looking on the bright side always
seems to help make things better.

You are a builder:

A great teacher bridges gaps
and builds relationships, friendships, and a
community. Teachers always look to make things
better and improve things in and outside of the
classroom. Building a community is something a
great teacher seeks to do in the classroom and
extends that to the entire school and its
community.

You inspire:

Everyone looks at a great teacher and
they want to be a better teacher, they want to be
a better student, even better, they want to be a
better person. A great teacher uncovers hidden
treasures, possibilities and magic right before
everyone’s eyes.

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Writing a Job description

  A job description is the details of what is expected of an individual  to do for the organization as a member of the organization.

In writing out a well detailed Job description (JD)

Firstly, we need to identify:

Our Vision

Our Goals

Our Mission statements

What do we do ?

How do we do what we do?

Also, Outline what needs to be done in total to achieve our vision.

Outline who needs to do what - this will help one know how many staff do we need now, how many can we afford.

Map out a functional organizational structure, so we know who is reporting to who in the organization.

One may include relationships with other people in the organization: Supervisory level, managerial requirements, and relationships with other colleagues.

A job description need not be limited to explaining the current situation, or work that is currently expected; it may also set out goals for what might be achieved in the future.

Job descriptions sometimes may be seen as hindrances for the employee to carry out some task that is beneficial to the organization but a wise organization will put this at the bottom of every of their Job descriptions -

"NOTE: THIS JOB DESCRIPTION IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ALL INCLUSIVE. EMPLOYEE MAY PERFORM OTHER RELATED DUTIES AS NEGOTIATED TO MEET THE NEEDS OF THE ORGANIZATION"

So as to protect the employee and the organization against some crucial decisions that may be taken in the nearest future tendering the job description as an evidence.

A detailed job description can be in this order:

Company name:

Job Title: The name of the Position to be filled

Department: What department is in need of this person

Job Grade: What is the level of the person in the organization? Is it top management, middle management, senior management, supervisory level, entry level

Position overview: What does this position actually look like, what it entails

Essential job Functions: The task the individual is expected to carry out, the core of the post

Non- essential job functions: The other task that this position might carry out sometimes.

Requirements: What we expect you to have to be able to fill this position, certificates, experiences, educational level, professional body certification

Other skills / Abilities: The skills required for this position so one will perform well at work.

Who to contact: who to contact, names, email address, etc

Deadline date: The last day for submission of Curriculum Vitae.

Now you can write a good job description that will help you know what to expect from your employee, and also know how to evaluate them when necessary.

It may be taken in the nearest future tendering the job description as an evidence.

A detailed jib description can be in this order:
Company name:
Job Title: The name of the Position to be filled
Department: What department is in need of this person
Job Grade: What is the level of the person in the organization? Is it top management, middle management, senior management, supervisory level, entry level
Position overview: What does this position actually look like, what it entails
Essential job Functions: The task the individual is expected to carry out, the core of the post
Non- essential job functions: The other task that this position might carry out sometimes.
Requirements: What we expect you to have to be able to fill this position, certificates, experiences, educational level, professional body certification
Other skills / Abilities: The skills required for this position so one will perform well at work.
Who to contact: who to contact, names, email address, etc
Deadline date: The last day for submission of Curriculum Vitae.

Now you can write a good job description that will help you know what to expect from your employee, and also know how to evaluate them when necessary.