Education Marshals Protest At Delta Summit

Okowa Seeks Curriculum Reform
From Ochei Matthew, Asaba
Aggrieved members of EduMarshall, a school attendance enforcement outfit in Delta State, on Wednesday nearly disrupted a two-day education held in the state capital, Asaba.
The Dream Daily checks revealed that the aggrieved education marshals are being owned eight months salaries by the state government.
One member who confided in The Dream Daily, lamented the alleged refusal of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa to attend to their plight: “We wanted to use this education summit opportunity to ask question but it seems the governor and the commissioner for basic education know what we want to ask, so they quickly denial us the microphone to speak.
“For eight months now, we have not receive salaries but we were duly recruited into the service. The problem is that government has not come out to tell us that our appointment has been terminated or give us hope but they have kept mute,” he lamented.
It took strenuous efforts by the governor’s aides and some security men to pacify the aggrieved workers to shelve their planned protest.
It could be recalled that the Edu-Marshal outfit was introduced during the last administration to apprehend out-of-school children hawking during school hours.
Meanwhile, Governor Okowa has called for reforms in the state education system, tasking stakeholders in the sector to come up with a template to align school’s curriculum to the needs of the society for continuous improvement in the standard of education in the country at large.
The governor stated that education was the life wire of any country or state that wishes to grow, stressing that his administration was determined to partner with relevant stakeholders to turn the sector around.
Speaking at a two-day Education Summit holding at the Event Centre in Asaba, the state capital, with stakeholders drawn from across the state to look critically into the falling standard of education, Okowa noted that reviewing the curriculum was critical to enhancing the quality and relevance of education for the benefit of all children while learning.
The governor also posited that teachers as critical stakeholders needed more orientation and training to impact positively on the performance of students, stressing that “great teachers help create great students”.
To achieve better results in education, Okowa said parents must be fully involved by assisting the teachers in providing sound education to students both in academic learning and in character, saying: “This can only be achieved when they are given the right kind of education based not only on only on universal access but also anchored on rigorous standards”.
Chairman of the Summit, Prof. Patrick Muoboghare, said the summit was organised to address what was responsible for the falling standard of education and “not who is wrong”.
Describing education as “a big investment,” Muoboghare who is the former Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education in the state, said however that all stakeholders were responsible for education failure and therefore call for proper funding of education.
Some participants at the summit advocated for synergy between teachers and parents in inculcating discipline, moral values and quality resource mechanism in the students to upgrade their education.