Of every ten students in Lagos State that enrols in secondary school education, seven of them dropout prior to completing Senior Secondary School 3 (SS3).
This implies that only three of them eventually complete secondary school education from the Junior Secondary School level.
This is according to the state’s Commissioner for Education, Folasade Adefisayo.
Mrs Adefisayo added that beyond the alarming dropout rate, only one of the three students makes a good grade worthy.
She disclosed this at the sensitisation of stakeholders on Lagos State Comprehensive School Programme held at Adeyemi Bero Auditorium, Alausa on Thursday.
It is not immediately clear if this figure was particularly for public schools or representative of all schools in the state. But national statistics on out of school children places Lagos State amongst those with high boy-child non-school goers.
In her words, “We discovered and observed that out of every 10 students admitted to JS1 only three make it to SS3, while only one student will eventually excel at the transition exam.”
Comprehensive schools to address dropout rate
The Lagos Government official said that the government plans to increase the number of comprehensive schools across the state from the initial pilot of 12 schools to 50 by September this year to address this challenge.
She said this was in demonstration of its commitment and huge investment of the government in equipping Lagos State school students to be self-reliant and skilled.
Mrs Adefisayo added that the comprehensive school programme which commenced in February is poised to reduce the rate of dropout in schools as some students are disconnected with the usual academic curriculum but prefer to learn various skills.
She emphasised that this programme would give them equal opportunities to explore their interest and train them to mastery level.
She explained to stakeholders comprising school principals, school support and education quality assurance officers across the state on the importance of integrating comprehensive school programme to the school curriculum.
According to the commissioner, the state government has established partnership with private and International institutions for training, internship opportunities and employment prospects for the students.
An MOU was recently signed by the Lagos State Government and City of Tampere in Finland.
“Already plans are on-going for some of the teachers to travel to Finland to understudy a similar system that operates in that country”, she added.
The Commissioner commended school principals for the highly impressive results in the last WASSCE stressing that the performance of students with a minimum of five credits including Mathematics and English has improved from 38.79% in 2020 to 79.64% in 2021.
Adefisayo encouraged the principals for more positive results as the huge investment by the government is evident in all schools across the State.
In a welcome address, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Mr. Abayomi Abolaji canvassed the commitment of stakeholders for the success of the programme.
He noted that the state government has equipped the pilot schools with the various infrastructure needed to actualize the newly established programme.
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