In a bid to improve its standards of education, the Kano state government has announced a collaboration with the Partnership for Learning for All (PLANE) to review and refine educational policies.
The government has also threatened to sanction non performing School Support Officers (SSO) in connection with falling standards of education or poor performance of schools under their watch.
The Commissioner for Education, Umar Doguwa disclosed this during a quarterly review meeting organised by PLANE and the state’s Ministry of Education.
Represented by the Ministry’s Director, Planning, Research and Statistics, Munzali Muhammad, the Commissioner said the state was working hard to ensure that the state meets global standards on its educational policies.
The Commissioner said: added that the state government has worked on four policies namely; girl child education policy, teacher policy, Gender policy and non school actors policy (private schools).
He said; “The girl child education policy is a policy that empowers the girl’s education in the state as regards to their retention, transition and completing the various levels of education. Also looking forward to what will improve the girl child education and remove all the barriers that are preventing girls from reaching the highest level of education in the state.
“The Kano State government has started implementing some of the policies. Because the earlier practice was that we appoint male principals to girls’ institutions but with the coming of the policy, only females will be heading girls’ schools. And there is a lot of improvement in the schools.
“We call them School Support Officers, SSO formerly known as School Inspectors. Normally, they are in clusters and we assign seven schools per SSO of which they are to report whatever activities in the school. And they are working in line with government policies.
“We are going to sanction those who are not performing because they have been given some allowances while doing those particular jobs. So, we are going to sanction those not performing either by deducting their allowance. Because allowance is based on productivity and performance.”
Earlier, the state team lead of PLANE, Umar Lawan, said some of the SSO have abandoned their responsibilities, “because whether they work or not they get paid.”
Lawan called on the government “to as a matter of urgency look into the ugly trend with a view to address it and improve the standard of education in the state.”
