How lab facilities will improve students’ performance

    The Day Secondary School Tunga, Minna, Niger State established in 1988 has about 200 qualified teachers and a student population of about 4,000 but the reality of its science laboratories isn’t so flattering. The school has a combined chemistry and physics lab with inadequate and obsolete apparatus thereby denying students the opportunities to […]

 

 

The Day Secondary School Tunga, Minna, Niger State established in 1988 has about 200 qualified teachers and a student population of about 4,000 but the reality of its science laboratories isn’t so flattering. The school has a combined chemistry and physics lab with inadequate and obsolete apparatus thereby denying students the opportunities to investigate, engage in scientific reasoning, manipulate equipment, record data, analyze results, and discuss their findings. 

Head of science department, Aisha R. Yusuf, said numerous challenges had faced laboratory approach in science instruction raging from the use of inadequate labs to outdated facilities. She said the school borrows facilities from other schools to be able to form reagents or carry out experiments especially during external exams.

Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, an oil exploration company, resolved to repair the combined physics and chemistry lab. The company’s senior adviser, public and government affairs, Abdullahi Ahmed Jibrin, said the lab was upgraded through the Network for Science Education Advancement (NSEA) to improve student’s achievement.

He said during the commissioning ceremony of the lab that “the refurbishing of this physics/chemistry laboratory is part of our company’s commitment to shapen lives through improved education in Nigeria.”

He said education was vital for the development of communities and the means through which future leaders are built, adding that ExxolMobil and its subsidiaries have contributed over N10 billion in supporting good educations in communities across Nigeria. He said the laboratory has been upgraded and provided with equipment such as conical flask, a galvanometer, text tubes, screens, micrometer screw gauge, optical lenses and litmus papers among others and that the company expected that the lab would be maximally utilized. He said “the project cost N3, 685,000.00.”

The head of science department said with the upgrade, students’ performance in the two subjects will improve.   

 

 

 

The principal, Mr. Ibrahim Muhammad Anzag, said the school had grown from strength to strength over the years and that in spite of crumbling labs and other facilities, 60 per cent of the students achieved credit in at least five subjects in both SSCE and NECO exam in 2016. He said effort will be made to boost the academic performance of students with the rehabilitation of the lab. He said the lab will be used with care and called on the government to recruit lab technician to keep the facilities in good shape. 

 

 

 

 

The principal said delinquent behavior which had been a major concern in the school had hugely reduced among students.

He cited lack of classroom and office furniture, perimeter fencing, sporting facilities and relevant textbooks as the major challenges affecting the school and called on government to address them.

A former teacher in the school said the provision of adequate lab facilities for science subjects will provide an experimental foundation for the theoretical concepts learned in the classrooms and afford both teachers and students an opportunity to probe some ideas in contention.  He said students suffered during exams before now, due to the lack of classroom supplies as well as inadequate laboratory and ICT facilities. “Poor facilities signified that students received insufficient knowledge on science subjects,” he said.

He said students faced difficulties during external exams in the school due to non-availability of materials for experiment and practical work, adding that teachers had to borrow apparatus from other schools to conduct experiments.

President of Science Teachers Association of Nigeria (STAN), Mr. Mohammed E. Moulud, who was at the commissioning ceremony, said the improvement of facilities and resources for science and building teachers’ confidence and competence are part of the aims of the association and that the support provided by ExxonMobil in education through NSEA which was an affiliate of STAN was a step in the right direction.

Also, National President of National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS), Dr. Sally NkemAdukwu-Bolujoko, described laboratory as very important aspect in the school where a child acquired first- hand knowledge about what he was taught.

She said, without laboratory students could not perform experiment to probe hypothesis.

“You can’t teach a person without showing the person what you are teaching. A child can learn when you talk and he can absorb and redeem 35 per cent, but when the child touches it he will learn more and will not forget,”she said.

She said that causes and effects of things are investigated in the laboratory adding that there could be no science without laboratory.