Half-baked education at schools without playgrounds ? The Punch ...

Half-built: Akute Community High School, Akute, Ogun State.
| credits: Stanley Ogidi

More and more schools are being established in the country without playgrounds and recreational facilities. Some of the schools, many of which were set up in the past decade, are located in residential buildings and other structures like shopping complexes with tiled premises, ALLWELL OKPI and SAMUEL AWOYINFA report

Education is a multi-task phenomenon. It involves the use of the brain, mind and body for holistic development of a child. But most schools these days ignore the physical element of education.

These types of schools come in different shapes and sizes. Some of them lack facilities, and the school fees they charge are low; others are rich schools with big structures and charge expensive fees. One major problem they share is the fact that though they are government-approved, they do not have facilities for extra-curricular facilities like sports and other aspects of physical education that should give pupils a rounded academic experience or development.

In developed countries, being involved in sports from primary school to secondary school can be the leeway to acquiring university education, what with the numerous sports-related scholarships that pupils who excel in sports can enjoy.

But Nigerian children seem to have been robbed of this opportunity, as most schools our correspondents visited only have concrete ?fields? where pupils engage in semblance of sporting activities that are better done on natural fields.

Psychologists and teachers say this trend, which implies that pupils spend most of their time in the classroom with little or no playtime, puts the nation at risk of having more physically unfit and poorly educated workforce in the future.

A psychologist and lecturer at the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Lagos, Dr. Sola Aletan, argued that it is unhealthy to confine children in classrooms all day without giving them opportunity to play.?

He said, ?Education is about raising children morally, socially, academically, and physically. But today, that physical aspect has been eroded, so you find the kids confined in their classrooms from morning till evening when they go home. It is an unhealthy situation. I don?t blame the school proprietors or proprietresses for these lapses. I blame government for allowing this to thrive.

?When you look at people that made it in the area of sports, you will discover that they attended a primary or secondary school where their sporting talents were discovered early. If you look at our national team players, you will discover that they went to schools where they had playgrounds.?

This much can be seen in the examples of three former Nigerian football superstars ? Messrs Godwin Odiye, Stephen Keshi and Paul Okoku ? who, recently, decided to rehabilitate the sporting facilities in their alma mater.

The three athletes had attended St. Paul?s Catholic Nursery and Primary School, Ebute Meta, Lagos, where track and field events, as well as football were part and parcel of learning.

The players were, however, shocked to discover that decades after they had left, builings had taken over the fields where they played football and did other sporting events.

For the footballers whose future professional success was carved out of the little events they participated in as pupils in the school, it was unacceptable for their alma mater to be without a football pitch, among other sporting facilities they enjoyed in their growing-up years.

Okoku lamented: ?I am not happy. First of all, look at the pitch where we played, they have three buildings erected on the field that produced us.

?The field is occupied by classrooms, so where do you have the space for the kids to display their talents? My disappointment is that we have forgotten that to have an educational environment, we need to have a sporting environment too, because both of them go hand in hand.?

Aletan couldn?t agree more, as he said that academic and physical exercises have a lot in common.

He explained, ?When the body is exercised, the individual will be alert, awake, stronger and ready to learn. But when they are just in the class, they eat, drink, and sleep; they get tired easily; only that these children cannot voice out all these things to their teachers. But it can affect them; they will look somehow tired and dull, and it is because their bodies have not been sufficiently exercised.?

The psychologist said the situation of many children was complicated largely because of the lifestyle of their parents who keep them busy with after-school home coaching when they should be engaged in profitable extra-curricular activities. ?All of these prevent children from expressing themselves physically, confining them to just studies and watching television,? he said.

While listing the immediate and short-term effects of loss of playtime in early school days, Aletan said these included obesity, restlessness and inability to concentrate due to large amount of unspent energy; and on the long run, the dwindling performance of the nation in different sports.

He also said that people who did not have the opportunity to play as children are less likely to exercise regularly as adults. Consequently, they will be prone to illness.

According to Dr. Samson Babatunde, lecturer at the Department of Human Kinetics and Health Education, University of Lagos, lack of exercise has adverse effects on the academic performance of young pupils and students.

He said, ?Exercise and sports are chemical erasers that can assist in reorganising the pent-up tension in a person. When you exercise, you become refreshed and when you engage in other activities, whether mental work or any other activities, you will be focused and you will perform well. It is therefore very unfortunate that these days, pupils don?t have the opportunity to engage in sports and exercise.?

He also noted that the inclusion of sports and other physical exercises as part of the school?s curriculum is the reason teens in the U.S. and some parts of Europe develop huge and healthy bodies, and as a result, they do not fall ill easily.

He said, ?If we also give our children opportunities to engage in physical activities right from the primary school, we will discover that they will grow well, too, and they will be healthy.?

The Human Kinetics lecturer said physical education and sports are ?complimentary education,? meaning that whatever field of study a person takes to, his or her education is not complete unless physical education is added to it.

He explained, ?It has been found out that students who are allowed to participate well in physical education are academically better than others who do not. There are physiological reasons for that. If you exercise well, your circulatory system will work well. This circulatory system will disperse the necessary nutrients to every part of the body, including the brain, which we use for academics.?

Babatunde also said exercise had psychological effects on pupils. According to him, when a teacher allows the pupils who are tired as a result of being in class for hours to engage in recreational activities, they will return, more psychologically ready to learn.

Other benefits of sports in schools as highlighted by Babatunde include uniting the pupils, teaching them team work and making them disciplined.

He said, ?If you allow them to participate in sporting activities, if they want to excel, they will have to abide by the rules and regulations of the game. That means you are training them to be ethical and disciplined, as well as to imbibe the ability to take turns and allow other people to take their own turn, which is essential in any society.

?Secondly, someone who is engaged in team sports cannot be selfish because we know that the success of a team is dependent on how cohesive that team is; then you must cooperate with other people. And thirdly, if properly planned, sports can foster unity amongst the students, because in the field, students are able to interact with one another, and from there, permanent friendships are built.?

The argument, most time, is that though public schools are better in terms of giving pupils ample playtime because most of them have spaces big enough for at least a football pitch, in terms of sporting facilities, some private schools are a lot better academically.??

Hallmark Nursery and Primary Schools, Agidingbi, Ikeja, Lagos, is one of such with mini football pitch, sandy area for toddlers and other facilities like swings and merry-go-rounds.

The proprietress of the school, Mrs. Meg Nwobia, said extra-curricular activities are as important as mathematics or English language, and should be treated as a subject in schools.

She said, ?I remember that when we were in primary school, it was a normal thing for a school to have a football field and spaces for other games. We used to look forward to going out for breaks to play. Then, we had short breaks and long breaks. After playing for about 40 minutes, you were exhausted and in the next one hour you couldn?t tell the teacher that you wanted to go to the toilet, because you would have done that.

?It helps the kids to sit down and concentrate. Play is like a subject on its own. So, the way you plan mathematics, English and social studies and you put them on the timetable, that is how you should plan play. It is an integral part of the child?s learning,? she said.

According to Nwobia, play is particularly important for toddlers in pre-school, as all they really want to do is to play. She said between ages one and three years old, they were not really interested in academics.

Expressing her disappointment with the unhealthy trend, Nwobia said, ?I really wonder how children cope in schools that do not have playgrounds, as they sit down from 8a.m till evening. And I wonder how they get approval to run schools without playgrounds.?

According to Mrs. Nkechi Arinze, a parent, it does not matter what other facilities a school has, it is wrong for it to exist without a playground.

She said, ?It?s really annoying that schools these days neglect playtime. Children need to play, otherwise, they cannot learn well. And some of these schools are very expensive. I know one of such schools in Lekki whose tuition is in hundreds of thousands of naira, yet it has no playground.?

Mr. Sunday Olayiwola, administration officer at the Royal Masters Schools, Central Business District, Alausa, Ikeja, another school with adequate playground and recreational facilities, said playtime was the best avenue for pupils to interact.

Olayiwola, who looks after the school?s playground, among other facilities, and often assists the pupils at the playground, said children discussed a lot of things when they were playing, including what their parents did at home.

?This is because they are not able to let it out in the classroom. They also use the playtime to practise some things they had learnt in class or the ideas they have, like building sand castles and making shoes with sand,? he said.

?According to Adeoshun Olabisi, who heads the Public Relations and Services Department of the school, playtime is one of the best times for the kids to learn. The smart teachers could use the opportunity to teach the children languages, how to count and identify colours, among other things.

He said, ?A teacher can also use the opportunity to identify the weaknesses and strengths of the children ? whether the child is shy, dull or aggressive. A teacher can also identify children who have problem walking or talking, and many other things.?

Students of Zumratul Islamiyah Primary School II, which shares a compound with Akute Community High School, Akute, in Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State, is one of the numerous government-owned schools without sporting facilities. In fact, the entire compound was flooded when our correspondent visited on Thursday.

Worse still, the secondary school pupils learn under a ramshackle shed made of roughly assembled wooden planks and corrugated roofing sheets. The contraption was divided into about three classes, with a teacher for each of the classes. The environment was rowdy, with no clear distinction between one class and the other.

Both the head teacher of the primary school and the principal of the secondary school, who refused to disclose their identities, said the state government was aware of their predicament.

?The governor himself has been here, with the commissioner for education, so the problem here is known to them, and we believe something is being done about it,? they said.

Talking about what goes for a playground in the school, the head teacher of the primary school merely pointed to a barren land within the premises.

There was a project signboard which signified that the contract for the rehabilitation of the high school had been awarded by the State Universal Basic Education Board.

Ogun State Commissioner for Education, Mr. Segun Odubela, did not pick his call when our correspondent called him on Wednesday, neither did he respond to a text message sent to him.

Again, efforts to speak with the Lagos State Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Olayinka Oladunjoye, was unsuccessful. The Public Relations Officer of the ministry, Mr. Lanre Bajulaiye, said she was away on a two-week official engagement.

Bajulaiye said he was not competent to speak on the issue either. However, a reliable source in the ministry who pleaded anonymity noted that if the state government insisted on inspecting the private nursery and primary schools and even secondary schools in the state, almost 60 per cent of them would be shut down.

The source explained that there were some schools which, apart from not having playgrounds, were not schools in the real sense, but ?pigsties.?

?If you look around, there are some schools built with planks, some are situated in the same building housing either a church or a mosque. They use the same space for both religious worship and school.

?And when we close down such schools, the owners will run to the media or their political godfathers to complain that the state government is wicked. But they won?t tell you that they have flouted the guidelines on the establishment of nursery or primary school. That is the dilemma we are in,? the source said.??

Meanwhile, anyone who wants to run a private nursery or primary school or both in Lagos State must meet specified guidelines, as prepared by the state?s ministry of education. (See Below)

Guidelines for private nursery/primary schools in Lagos State

• The minimum land requirement for a nursery school shall be standard two plots of land
• The dimensions of each classroom shall not be less than 8.36 metres by 6.80 metres.
• There must be a master plan of the school, which must indicate clearly the location of the classrooms: a minimum of three classrooms. In addition, there shall be a library, sick bay, head teacher?s office, staff room, eight water closet toilets and administrative offices
• There shall be open spaces on the premises of the school for playground (sand-filled) and such as shall be approved as adequate for this purpose
• The school shall provide adequate toys, recreation facilities such as swing, balls, etc.
• The building and premises shall be certified as suitable by the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development
• An adequately equipped sick bay, manned by a qualified nurse, shall be maintained and affiliated to a government-approved hospital close to the school
• The facilities and infrastructure shall be certified as adequate by the ministry before approval is granted

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Private primary school

• The minimum land requirement shall be standard one plot of land
• There must be a master plan of the school, which must indicate clearly the location of the classrooms (minimum of six).
• There shall be open spaces on the premises of the school as playground, which should be approved as adequate for this purpose
• The school shall provide sports and games equipment for its pupils
• The building and premises shall be certified as suitable by the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development
• A fully equipped sick bay/first aid room shall be maintained at all times, with a trained nurse in attendance and affiliated to a nearby government-approved hospital
• Provision shall be made for regular water supply and at least eight water closet toilets
• Schools shall provide adequate fire-fighting and other emergency equipment in all buildings (such as fire extinguishers) and should keep them functional at all times

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Source: http://www.punchng.com/feature/half-baked-education-at-schools-without-playgrounds/

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