The Nigerian Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA, has embarked on a vigorous accreditation exercise geared towards ensuring that minimum standards are maintained in schools within the nation’s capital Abuja in line with laid down rules and regulations.
Speaking during the orientation exercise, the Acting Director, Department of Quality Assurance of the FCT Education Secretariat, Mrs Magdalene Uzoanya said, “accreditation is a routine exercise and the core activity of quality assurance mechanism in making sure that schools are well assessed in various areas of Education Management and to enhance quality of teaching and learning process”.
She charged the evaluators who were drawn from serving and retired officers to bring their wealth of experiences and ability to identify and apply the various aspects of the assessment tools and rating of each school without compromise.
Mrs Uzoanya urged evaluators to work as a team on the field and ensure prompt submission of reports at the end of the exercise. She noted that the delay of reports also delays other activities that are expected to follow especially in obtaining approval for the reports to facilitate issuance of certificates.
Uzoanya added that the Department has been making concerted efforts to improve the process, adding that with the new printed operational guidelines, it could be done timely.
She assured them of the FCT Education Secretariat’s desire to enhance the quality of education in the FCT for both public and private schools.
Credible exercise
The resource persons during the programme advised the evaluators to seek clarifications when confronted with any challenge while on the field and ensure credibility of the accreditation exercise.
The intensive accreditation exercise which is a week long affair will be carried out by teams of evaluators simultaneously through their visits to different assigned schools in all the six area councils of the FCT.
The process of accreditation must be well coordinated to include School location details, ccurricular and academic activities,phhysical facilities/ environment/ infrastructure, sports facilities, staffing, teacher activities learning environment, support services and welfare among others.
Emmanuel Ukoh
