MEMORIES OF GSS GANYE 

Some events are greater than their times. They consolidate in our brain, as memories, to form experiences which we would recall to avert a mistake or solve new problems. Our secondary school experience is one that we cannot dispense with easily. We must inevitably apply it either as education administrators or universally as parents of our teenage children. For me, the memories of my stay at Government Secondary School Ganye (now in Adamawa State) have been a key asset that is benefitting not only my children but also thousands of others in my state. I have narrated the personal account of that stay in 2003 when I visited the school for the first time in twenty-four years to collect my WAEC result! (The two articles Harry Visits His Alma Mater can be downloaded from the archives of www.gamji.com). I have decided to avoid repeating that account here; instead, I have preferred to outline the special debt I owe the school.

My training in education did not go beyond my first year in the university when in 1979 I offered it as a subsidiary course at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. However, by destiny, education has become part of me since 1982. In 2000 I was invited by Bauchi State Government to help in founding some model secondary school, along the line of Kano Science Schools that were established in the 1970s, which will, as a temporary measure, give an instant improve the poor standard of education in the state. I chaired a taskforce that was formed for this purpose under the governor’s office, which was later transformed into a management board. There was no blueprint on the project, so we were left to formulate policies and initiate projects that would make the dream of the government a reality.

I did not copy Kano. Instead, three things, all products of my experience, helped me in achieving exactly what the government wanted. I believe that education means so much to society, seeing how it uplifted me from the status of a boy that was rearing cattle in 1973 to wherever I found myself today. So it must be pursued with all honesty, rigour and support. I was therefore ready to fight any battle to ensure that the children that would enroll in those schools had a chance similar, if not better than, the one I had thirty years earlier. And many battles were fought against agents of mediocrity, as expected, including government officials, parents and students. However, with our firmness and the support of Governor Mu’azu, the battles were won.

The second is my training as a scientist. It gave me the wisdom of pragmatic approach to issues such that they could be solved instantly without reference to the bogus theories harboured by experts on education. I likened the students to my crops on the field, which for good harvest would required good seeds, timely planting, instant weeding, correct manuring, and, finally, prompt harvest and storage. Or like a chemical process, quality education can only be achieved when all factors contributing to its delivery are kept as optimal as possible. Or as a patient, the poor state of education can only be redeemed by applying appropriate prescriptions that many times could be unavoidably painful and bitter.

The third, and the most important in my view, was my experience at Government Secondary School Ganye. I still remember how the idea to replicate my secondary school experience saved me hours of thought and answered dozens of questions. Without attending any course in education management, I recaptured the old process of running such schools in the former Northeastern State, from admission of students to their writing GCE examinations, which they now dub as ‘NECO’ and ‘WAEC’, including issues regarding student’s welfare, infrastructure, etc. For seven years we stayed on course without wavering. And given the high rate of success that made other neighbouring states solicit for our advice, I can now, without hesitation, confirm that experience is the best teacher.

What we did was simple. The most important thing was the thorough, and often brutal, application of merit as the universal yardstick for everything in the course of our assignment as it was applied to education in the former Northeast. Students were admitted strictly on basis of merit. Many of my nephews could not be admitted to JSS I, though their parents have contributed a lot to my own education. It was harsh. Many brothers and sisters of the Governor himself could not pass the entrance examination and we did not blink our eye in turning them away. The same thing applied to children of officials of the Ministry of Education and other ministries. It was painful even to me but it was the pill I direly needed to solve the problem. At the end, it paid well. Through simple tests we were able to admit the best children in the state, including the children of parents from remote villages and low cadres of society. A child to education is like a seed to a farmer. If you sow a bad seed, no amount of rain or fertilizer would give you a good yield. There is not a better way of guaranteeing the failure of children in education like running a system that is merit-free, as is currently the practice in most public schools in the country. We avoided this mistake.

Teachers were also recruited or retained on basis of merit. Teachers whom we found lukewarm or incompetent were instantly redeployed to the ministry of education and replaced by better ones. It was not sufficient to submit your NCE or degree certificate for a teaching job in a primary or secondary school under the Board. You are sent to the Director of Examinations, Hajiya Asma’u Pate, who would ask you to sit for a national common entrance examination paper (if your are applying to teach in a primary school) or a JAMB paper in English and in your subject of specialty if your are applying to teach in secondary school. We saw graduates of mathematics that could not pass national common entrance mathematic paper! Chineke. When you pass the examination, then you are invited for an interview. This system made away with incompetent teachers.

Then came the issue of measurement. No technology succeeds without applying the technique of measurement to the last micron if possible. That is why it is the first chapter in any physics textbook. To achieve the same standard in all the schools, the teachers held sessions where they ‘harmonised’ the syllabus of every subject such that it was uniformly covered. They were also assigned to measure the progress of the children through compulsory weekly assignment and monthly tests, which serve as continuous assessments. Then at the end of each term students in the various schools sit for the same examination set and marked by the board, not by the teachers. The results are returned to the schools at the beginning of the following term. Denying the teachers the measurement of their students at the end of each term put a lot pressure on them to ensure that they cover the syllabus are targeted for the term and do so diligently. A query or reward awaits every teacher: the diligent receives a bonus of a motorcycle or cash at the end of the academic year, while the indolent receives a query at the end of the term, with a warning of a possible sack or redeployment if the poor performance in his subject or class is repeated. During the term, the schools are inspected monthly to ensure compliance with standards.