The Borno State Government has announced plans to commence afternoon
primary and secondary education system to address problems of congestion and increase enrollment of out-of-school children.
The state governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum, announced this on Monday in Maiduguri during his inauguration speech after taking an oath of office for second term.
“Although we have built dozens of new Mega-Size
schools and expanded existing schools with
about 1000 new classrooms, we are still faced with issues of congestion in classrooms, and with the worse problem of having thousands of out-of-school-children despite being of school-ages.
“I am appointing an implementation committee to work out modalities for starting the afternoon school
system, and it will be identifying pilot schools to be selected from some of our
mega schools in Maiduguri which have good lightening systems.”
Zulum explained that introducing afternoon
schools would entail increased number of staff and for that, he directed office of the Head of Service to carefully identify some well-certificated staff currently redundant at government secretariats, who will be trained on school
orientation and can be deployed to hold non-teaching positions in afternoon schools.
The governor also said security measures will be
taken to ensure success of the afternoon schools noting that classes may sometimes
extend to early portions of the night.