Public school student wins Kogi science competition

The competition tagged “21 Young Scientists Governor’s Award Competition” (KYSGA-21), also featured students from private schools and would be used to select those to represent the state in the national science competition.

Speaking at the closing ceremony and presentation of awards of the programme, the state commissioner for education, science and technology, Mrs Rosemary Oshikoya, said the outcome of the competition was the manifestation of the commitment of the government to the development of the sector.

According to her, the result showed that the public schools in the state had been elevated to the level that made their products to favourably compete with those of private ones.

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She, however, said the state government would continue to invest in education as it would employ science, technical and vocational teachers in secondary schools, and provide the enabling environment for students to acquire the prerequisite skills to be self-reliant.

Osikoya said that the ministry did a human resource mapping in terms of the numbers of teachers in public secondary schools, which indicated that the state had a deficit of science, technical and vocational teachers.

“The ministry has proposed recruitment of more science, technical and vocational teachers for secondary schools in the 2019 state budget, and we are happy that the process has already commenced.

“The State Executive Council has also approved the establishment of additional 17 science and technical colleges across the state to complement the existing four.

“This will enable all the 21 local government areas of the state to have one technical college each, which have already been identified,” Osikoya said.

The commissioner said that the state government was also focusing on capacity building for teachers through training and retraining, which would be done before the end of this year.

In his remarks, Mr Onoja Michael, the Project Director, Kogi Wide Academic Excellence Competition (K-WAEC), the event facilitator, commended Bello for his continuous support and patronage in ensuring the continuation of their mandate.

“The credit also goes to the commissioner and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, for giving us the privilege of collaborating and organising this level of competition.”