LAGOS: Govt launches initiatives to enhance pupils’ performance

THE government, through the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Education, has introduced a technology intervention programme tagged “STEAM” to the state’s education sector. 

The Tutor General/Permanent Secretary, Barrister Margaret Solarin, stated that the STEAM initiative, an acronym for ‘Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics’, which kicked off at the Education District I in Agege, is aimed at aiding the performance of pupils in both internal and external examinations.

Solarin said: “In a bid to work successfully with the state government in actualising its plans for our teachers and students to excel, we at the District Level have keyed into this special intervention programme which will help to put in place needed requirements for our students to excel and perform better”.

She extended her appreciation to all the technical partners who are ready to give the district maximum support in the supplies of the gadgets and enabling environment needed. 

The Senior Special Adviser to the Governor on Education, Mrs. Adetola Salau, explained that the government is harnessing every laudable initiative that would aid a better performance of students in external examinations, stressing that ‘STEAM” was one of such initiatives. 

She said that her office has entered into a partnership with the United States of America and German Embassies in order to have a very formidable team for the intervention programme and achieve better WASSCE results from the students in subsequent examinations. 

According to her, the focus emanated from the statistics of students performance in WASSSCE and the need to focus on some critical areas which would be covered under the STEAM initiative. 

She underscored the importance of teaching methodology that is dynamic and in tandem with the present-day realities, adding that teaching in a way that provokes creativity and new ideas should be encouraged as against teaching in abstract.  

The SSA pointed out that Lagos, and by extension Nigeria, has a lot of human resource potentials such as the students, and it is expected that they would be adequately nurtured and tutored by their teachers.