SCHOOL TEACHERS DECRY LEARNING IMPEDIMENT ON ABANDONED SCIENCE LABORATORIES.

The activities of ‘Education monitors’ is to ensure that public school projects are well utilized and serve the community better. These activities have helped put issues of school projects and activities in the spotlight which leads to improved service delivery. The education monitors embarked on a series of monitoring exercises within Kaduna metropolis from August 2020 and monitored over 20 public schools. The activities were geared towards community sensitization, campaign, and awareness of public procurement and community participation in ensuring service delivery and community project monitoring.

The Public and Private Development Centre through the Macarthur Foundation support grant on education helped the monitors achieve this goal. One of the most interesting findings from the monitoring was from Government Girls Senior Secondary School (GGSS), Independence way, Kaduna North where there was an abandoned science laboratory.

It was gathered that the school was to be renovated in 2017 by AA and SY Partners but at the time of monitoring, the project was yet to be completed. The contractors renovated classrooms, staff offices, blocks of staff toilets, and students’ toilets, but left out the science laboratory. The importance of a science laboratory cannot be overemphasized as it enhances mastery of science subjects, development of scientific reasoning abilities, increasing comprehension of the complexity, and empirical work.

Furthermore, we gathered that the students were taught science practicals in their respective classes and sometimes in a multi-purpose laboratory that was also renovated. A school staff who pleaded anonymity explained that both abandoned laboratories, the constructed and the existing ones were locked by the contractors, and the school was never given access to it. The staff noted that the laboratories affect their students academically.

Ordinarily, It is part of the school management’s job to ensure projects are up to standard and completed, however, this was not the case as the school management could not effectively monitor the project due to lack of project information. The importance of the availability of procurement information can not be overemphasized here as it may have solved the issue of contractors or the outcry of the current management not having relevant information on the project.

The education monitors also gathered that the School Board Management Committee (SBMC) which is the bridge between the school and the community is not functional. The SBMC acts as monitors of on-going school projects, ensuring good relationships between the community, the school and informing the government and the community on the specific educational needs of the school. It is worthy to note that the SBMC is mandated by the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) to achieve the above, however, the school has to go into the community for advocacy visits to establish one.

Since the inception of Malam Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai’s administration in May 2015, Kaduna state began the implementation of several open government initiatives, fiscal transparency, and citizens’ engagement reforms. Kaduna state has now fully joined the Open Government Partnership (OGP) which promotes fiscal responsibility, access to information, and citizens’ engagement.

Open governance has availed citizens (monitors) the opportunity to access public information about government and other hitherto inaccessible documents; which leads to effective service delivery. With platforms like Citizen Feedback App (Eyes and Ears) and the state’s procurement website (budeshi.ng/kadpp) monitors and citizens are able to source data. However, the contract detail of this particular project was not published on This project was sourced from the Citizen Feedback App and information about the Citizen Feedback App (Eyes and Ears). The monitors went further to send an FOI letter to SUBEB requesting contract details but to no avail.

One would wonder why access to information is still difficult in a state that practices OGP as the availability of the project’s information would have solved this learning impediment. Also herein lies a question as to why is there an absence of SBMC when it has been mandated to be established in all schools in the state to help monitor and ensure school activities?. We are forwarding an urgent call to action to relevant stakeholders and authorities for the tracking and completion of this project to avail better learning of science in this school.

The monitors have paid an advocacy visit to SUBEB to remind them of the project and SBMC, which they promised to look into. The Director KADPPA also accompanied the team to the school and promised to check the payment status of the project.

Written by Jamila Mohammed Dahiru (WeCare Awareness Initiative)