It was the 7th Graduation and Prize-Giving Day of De Joan’s Nursery and Primary School, Maza Maza, Lagos, for those who have completed their Primary Six education and for nursery school pupils intending to go into the primary.
Mrs. Joy Nkwocha who is the Coordinator of the school declared that
no level of opposition by insurgents can truncate the giant stride which
the nation has recorded in education particularly, in the area of the
girl-child education. Sharing in the grief of the families of the
abducted Chibok schoolgirls, she said: “Frankly speaking, insurgence
cannot stop the girls from being educated. I do not want parents in the
troubled areas to withdraw their children, especially the girls from
school. You see, if you train a girl, you’re actually training a nation.
Nowadays, girls are the pillars of home and even, the nation. And many
women are now, in high positions of authority. It’s due to their
educational attainments.”
She also spoke on the impact of recurrent industrial action rocking the Nigerian education sector. “It only plunges the sector further into the mud,” she lamented. “You find our children staying idle at home for a very long time. But when they return to school, you see a different thing. Some of the girls may get pregnant and the males may join bad gangs that lure them into negative activities. This may not augur well for Nigeria’s education system and I think this may not be far from the reason you find many nursing mothers in the NYSC camp lately. And it’s not all the time that we parents will monitor them. When young girls stay idle for a long time in the house, they can fall into any temptation and one thing or the other might happen and it’s not really good.”
Commenting on the sterling qualities of De Joan’s School pupils and the essence of the prize-giving day, she said in a chat with Education Review: “Though we’re at this end of Mazamaza, our children are among the best you can get anywhere. They’re fearless. And when they speak, they’re very, very bold. This is evident in the Young Ministers competition where our pupils came out tops. Again, this is not a boast; sincerely speaking, our children are intelligent.” The prize-giving, she said, is to encourage the graduating pupils, particularly the exceptional ones, to put in their best. “When you encourage them, they will perform better next time.
The guest speaker at the ceremony, Mr. Chika Abanobi, Associate Editor, and Head, Education Desk, of The Sun newspapers, in his lecture titled Education: The Best Gift For Every Child cited examples with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun, Americanah, etc) and Malala Yousafazi (the Pakistani girl-child education activist), who through their quest and love for education, became global figures, in their young age, as an evidence that education is the best gift for every child, male or female.
But effective education, he pointed out, is a shared responsibility. The parents he said, must collaborate with the school and teachers must effectively educate their pupils. Parental responsibility, according to him, should go beyond financial commitment to making sure their children do their homework because, as he said, “by sending your child to school, you are investing. You must monitor his or her progress to know if your investment is doing well.” He argued that for a teacher to effectively impart upon his pupil, such a teacher must not only teach well, but, must also have mastery of the subject he or she is teaching. And in addition to several other points raised, the teacher must be winsome and approachable, jovial and humorous and must not shortchange his/her pupils or students.
“Don’t say the pupils are doing very well when they are not, just to impress their parents,” he counselled. “Intelligent parents will soon find out that you are not telling them the truth and may withdraw their kids from your school”.
On the part of the school, Abanobi submitted that a school that desires to be an effective medium through which knowledge can be imparted to its students should seek to improve on its academic programmes and facilities. He pointed out that the world of learning is going digital and interactive with smart boards, projectors, adding that to enhance learning, “a good school should then, acquire some of these, even if at piecemeal.”
Other efforts which a good school should implore to boost learning, according to him, are: “training and retraining of its teachers, shunning pressures to indulge in examination malpractice, avoiding the temptation of shortchanging its students and employing good teachers as well as adequately remunerating them.”
The guest lecturer did not leave out the students for whom all the efforts are being made. He pleaded with students to show appreciation for all the good efforts being made for them by theirparents, teachers and school, by taking their studies very seriously, by being punctual to school and by being active in both internal and external school activities. He also tasked them to take their class and home works seriously, to study in advance and to engage themselves in research works.
Exceptional performances put up by the students in some of the activities, academic and socio-cultural, lined up for the day, attest to the fact that the investments in them is not in vain. Even the tots in the kindergarten classes, through their outstanding and rib-cracking performances, proved that the De Joan’s School is making positive impact on them.
In a chat with Education Review, Dr. Jossy Nkwocha, former General Editor, Newswatch magazine, former senior stakeholder adviser for the UK-based Adam Smith International, the World-Bank accredited firm that handled privatisation communications for Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) Abuja, FNIPR (Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations), one of Nigeria’s foremost practitioners of public relations, Head, Corporate Communications, Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals (IEPL) Port Harcourt, and Director, De Joan’s Nursery and Primary School, revealed the reason behind their choice of the guest speaker.
“Our choice of Mr. Chika Abanobi, was made out of the fact that we have been reading The Sun for a long time and have seen his input in the education sector,” the Masters’ and PhD degrees holder in public relations from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), and author of many books in public relations which serve as practitioners’ handbooks, said. “And the lecture he delivered today has proved us right that we chose the right person, the way he brought in the stories of Malala and Chimamanda to drive home his point that education is the best gift for every child. So, we are happy that he did not disappoint us.”
While commending Goodluck Jonathan and his team on the Save-A-School Project, he also agreed with his wife, Joy, that insurgency cannot end girl-child education in Northern Nigeria. “Malala faced the same situation in Pakistan and did not give up. That is why we saw her coming here to campaign against such acts. And today, the lecture we have been given is that female education is very important and so is male child education.”
Nkwocha who shared in the pain Nigerian students go through to acquire education, admonished them not to give up but rather to persevere and show more diligence. “They should not allow what is happening, recurrent tussle between government and lecturers, to make them drop out of school because that will create a very big problem for us.”
The outgoing Head Boy, Nduka Chibuike, thanked the school for its offer of qualitative education. “This school is the best in life and my teachers are the best you can get anywhere,” he said. “They are excellent. Leaving this school will leave a very big mark in my life.” Other guests who praised the school’s giant strides in quality education, include Mr. Kelvin Anyanwu, the school’s PTA Chairman and Dr. Raphael James, Publisher, The National Biographer, an image relations biographical promotions periodical, and chairman of the event.
She also spoke on the impact of recurrent industrial action rocking the Nigerian education sector. “It only plunges the sector further into the mud,” she lamented. “You find our children staying idle at home for a very long time. But when they return to school, you see a different thing. Some of the girls may get pregnant and the males may join bad gangs that lure them into negative activities. This may not augur well for Nigeria’s education system and I think this may not be far from the reason you find many nursing mothers in the NYSC camp lately. And it’s not all the time that we parents will monitor them. When young girls stay idle for a long time in the house, they can fall into any temptation and one thing or the other might happen and it’s not really good.”
Commenting on the sterling qualities of De Joan’s School pupils and the essence of the prize-giving day, she said in a chat with Education Review: “Though we’re at this end of Mazamaza, our children are among the best you can get anywhere. They’re fearless. And when they speak, they’re very, very bold. This is evident in the Young Ministers competition where our pupils came out tops. Again, this is not a boast; sincerely speaking, our children are intelligent.” The prize-giving, she said, is to encourage the graduating pupils, particularly the exceptional ones, to put in their best. “When you encourage them, they will perform better next time.
The guest speaker at the ceremony, Mr. Chika Abanobi, Associate Editor, and Head, Education Desk, of The Sun newspapers, in his lecture titled Education: The Best Gift For Every Child cited examples with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of A Yellow Sun, Americanah, etc) and Malala Yousafazi (the Pakistani girl-child education activist), who through their quest and love for education, became global figures, in their young age, as an evidence that education is the best gift for every child, male or female.
But effective education, he pointed out, is a shared responsibility. The parents he said, must collaborate with the school and teachers must effectively educate their pupils. Parental responsibility, according to him, should go beyond financial commitment to making sure their children do their homework because, as he said, “by sending your child to school, you are investing. You must monitor his or her progress to know if your investment is doing well.” He argued that for a teacher to effectively impart upon his pupil, such a teacher must not only teach well, but, must also have mastery of the subject he or she is teaching. And in addition to several other points raised, the teacher must be winsome and approachable, jovial and humorous and must not shortchange his/her pupils or students.
“Don’t say the pupils are doing very well when they are not, just to impress their parents,” he counselled. “Intelligent parents will soon find out that you are not telling them the truth and may withdraw their kids from your school”.
On the part of the school, Abanobi submitted that a school that desires to be an effective medium through which knowledge can be imparted to its students should seek to improve on its academic programmes and facilities. He pointed out that the world of learning is going digital and interactive with smart boards, projectors, adding that to enhance learning, “a good school should then, acquire some of these, even if at piecemeal.”
Other efforts which a good school should implore to boost learning, according to him, are: “training and retraining of its teachers, shunning pressures to indulge in examination malpractice, avoiding the temptation of shortchanging its students and employing good teachers as well as adequately remunerating them.”
The guest lecturer did not leave out the students for whom all the efforts are being made. He pleaded with students to show appreciation for all the good efforts being made for them by theirparents, teachers and school, by taking their studies very seriously, by being punctual to school and by being active in both internal and external school activities. He also tasked them to take their class and home works seriously, to study in advance and to engage themselves in research works.
Exceptional performances put up by the students in some of the activities, academic and socio-cultural, lined up for the day, attest to the fact that the investments in them is not in vain. Even the tots in the kindergarten classes, through their outstanding and rib-cracking performances, proved that the De Joan’s School is making positive impact on them.
In a chat with Education Review, Dr. Jossy Nkwocha, former General Editor, Newswatch magazine, former senior stakeholder adviser for the UK-based Adam Smith International, the World-Bank accredited firm that handled privatisation communications for Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) Abuja, FNIPR (Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations), one of Nigeria’s foremost practitioners of public relations, Head, Corporate Communications, Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals (IEPL) Port Harcourt, and Director, De Joan’s Nursery and Primary School, revealed the reason behind their choice of the guest speaker.
“Our choice of Mr. Chika Abanobi, was made out of the fact that we have been reading The Sun for a long time and have seen his input in the education sector,” the Masters’ and PhD degrees holder in public relations from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), and author of many books in public relations which serve as practitioners’ handbooks, said. “And the lecture he delivered today has proved us right that we chose the right person, the way he brought in the stories of Malala and Chimamanda to drive home his point that education is the best gift for every child. So, we are happy that he did not disappoint us.”
While commending Goodluck Jonathan and his team on the Save-A-School Project, he also agreed with his wife, Joy, that insurgency cannot end girl-child education in Northern Nigeria. “Malala faced the same situation in Pakistan and did not give up. That is why we saw her coming here to campaign against such acts. And today, the lecture we have been given is that female education is very important and so is male child education.”
Nkwocha who shared in the pain Nigerian students go through to acquire education, admonished them not to give up but rather to persevere and show more diligence. “They should not allow what is happening, recurrent tussle between government and lecturers, to make them drop out of school because that will create a very big problem for us.”
The outgoing Head Boy, Nduka Chibuike, thanked the school for its offer of qualitative education. “This school is the best in life and my teachers are the best you can get anywhere,” he said. “They are excellent. Leaving this school will leave a very big mark in my life.” Other guests who praised the school’s giant strides in quality education, include Mr. Kelvin Anyanwu, the school’s PTA Chairman and Dr. Raphael James, Publisher, The National Biographer, an image relations biographical promotions periodical, and chairman of the event.
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The Sun editor speaks on: ‘Education, the best gift for every child’ |
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