Dwindling fortunes of Kaduna Capital School

It started as a gender-mixed boarding primary school and later a day secondary section was commissioned with 121 students. The school was eventually deboarded in 1983. KCS was regarded as one of the best schools in Kaduna State with committed teachers who used broad range of teaching and learning techniques to meet the needs of […]

It started as a gender-mixed boarding primary school and later a day secondary section was commissioned with 121 students. The school was eventually deboarded in 1983.
KCS was regarded as one of the best schools in Kaduna State with committed teachers who used broad range of teaching and learning techniques to meet the needs of their pupils and students.  
However, the 57-year old school is currently suffering from poor management and neglect by the government, the host community and the old students of the school. The school has been in a deplorable condition for several years now.
Some of the problems affecting the school include inadequate teachers, classrooms and furniture as well as teaching and learning materials. Presently, the school has 3,728 students, 40 classrooms, 38 full-time teachers, 26 part-timers and 69 administrative staff.
A teacher in the secondary section said: “We have overcrowded classes in this section because the population exceeded the number of students required in the section. The school has no standard placement policy; students are being admitted any time.
“Directors in the government ministries have developed the habit of sending letters to the school management requesting for admission of certain number of students.”
He said both academic and non-academic personnel are grossly inadequate in the secondary section, adding that the section has only three teachers, each for the two core subjects of mathematics and English language.
The ratio of teachers per student and teachers per classrooms stood at 1,000 students per teacher and 10 classrooms per teacher.  
He also lamented on inadequate teaching resources in key subjects like sciences, mathematics and agriculture, adding that laboratories in the school were ill-equipped.
Daily Trust further observed that in some classes students are taking their lessons seated on the floor or the windows due to lack of sufficient furniture. In the junior classes, students peep through the windows to catch up with the teachers due to the ovecrowded nature of the classes.
A female student told our reporter that “learning is extremely difficult in the overcrowded classrooms because teachers have no time to test the capabilities of individual students.”
Another problem affecting the school is the activities of some gangsters who used to come to the school from outside to mingle with the students.   
The management of the school, in an effort to overcome this problem, has resolved to meet with the leaders of the neighbouring communities of Malali, Badarawa and Unguwar Rimi and mend the collapsed fence of the school through which the gangsters enter the school, a teacher said.  
Also, the introduction of ‘generate and remit’ policy by the Kaduna State government about four years ago has made funding a major challenge to the school. According to the policy, only 55 per cent of the monies generated from school fees by government -owned schools will be remitted to the schools’ managements.  
A teacher in the school alleges that funds being remitted to the institution is either inadequate to run the school or is being squandered. He said: “Government is remitting about N25m annually.”
The President of Kaduna Capital School Old Students Association (KADCAPSOSA) Rabi Musa Saulawa said the association had met with stakeholders and identified problems bedevilling the school with a view to addressing them.  
She also said the association will assist in renovating the school, providing books, computers and laboratory apparatus as well as collaborate with the PTA to employ more teachers.  
“Our aim is to restore the lost glory of the school; we will do everything within our power to improve the standard of teaching and learning in the school,” Saulawa said.
The Kaduna State Commissioner for Education, Ibrahim Ali, said he has visited the school several times in a bid to detect the problems bedevilling it and find solutions to them.
He said already a new principal was recently posted to the school and that majority of the teachers who have been teaching in the school for over 25 years will soon be transferred to other schools and new teachers would be brought in.
“We have discovered that the teachers that have been in the school for so long constitute the major problem of the school. So efforts are on to ensure that the problems of the school are addressed. We have also met with the Old Students Association of the school and various issues affecting the school have been discussed,” he said.