Protests: Oyo students need discipline

IT is so shocking that some secondary school students in Oyo State could set their classrooms on fire simply because the state government introduced a policy that would make the state competitive educationally in the country.

After the last promotional examination, the government ensured that it would no longer accept automatic promotion, as the state is not where it should be educationally, despite the fact that it is the Pace-setter state.

As a result of this, several unserious students who failed their promotional examinations, but would ordinarily have been promoted as it was done in the past, were told to repeat. This angered the unserious students, and they went on a rampage, destroying classrooms. We should not forget how some students also protested when Governor Abiola Ajimobi first came up with the idea of a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for public schools in the state. Then, the students destroyed several public buildings, including Governor Ajimobi’s vocational centre at Oke-Ado, Ibadan. It took the intervention of the then Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr Leye Oyebade, to save the situation from degenerating further.

It is really embarrassing that these are the types of students public schools are producing in Oyo State.

Despite acquiring education without paying tuition, public school students in the state ought to be appreciative to the state government, while doing everything possible to excel in their studies, but this is not the case. In fact, it is being speculated that unmotivated teachers who don’t get paid on time have left the students to their fate. It is, therefore, necessary that discipline is returned to schools in the state.

It is so unfortunate that those who were not part of the burning of the classrooms are now suffering as a result of the actions of a few unserious students.

The state Commissioner for Education, Professor Adeniyi Olowofela, should, therefore, come out with policy towards returning discipline to Oyo public schools.

I also want to commend the new policy of the government which brings an end to automatic promotion in public schools, as this will make the students to be serious academically.

• Alhaji Saheed Olaoluwa,

Ibadan.