COMPLIANCE OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS TO THE NATIONAL POLICY ON EDUCATION IN EDO STATE: IMPLICATIONS ON EDUCATIONAL PLANNING AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

This paper is on private schools' compliance to the National Policy on Education (NPE). The focus was on private schools' structure and their entry/graduation ages, including how these can contribute to the overcrowded classrooms in public universities, making human and physical resources highly inadequate, leading to ineffective and inefficient teaching and learning experiences, which do not augur well forself and national development and might lead to wastages in Oredo local government area of Edo state. The population of the study was the 145 private schools in the Oredo local government area of Edo state while the respondents were the 145 head teachers of the schools. 80 private schools were taken as the sample size using the simple random sampling technique with the 80 headteachers as respondents. The results revealed that the 80 private schools did comply with the NPE at the level of having crèche/daycare, nursery/KG without the pre basic and having basic 1-5 instead of the basic 1-6 in the NPE. The schools also had upper basic and post basic levels of education. The study showed that the entry ages and ages for graduation at these levels were not in compliance with the NPE and this could have been one of the causes of explosion in enrolments in public universities at 100Levels with the attendant consequences of overcrowded classrooms, hostels, highly inadequate furniture, computers, among other facilities in public universities. This paper recommended the enforcement of all private schools to restructure their schools in order to comply with the NPE both in structure, entry and graduation ages, including enacting laws backing the NPE and prosecuting culprits of the law among others.by the Universal Basic EducationCommission (UBEC).