Months after an outcry over the relative failure of the “cumbersome” transcript application process at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile Ife, the University has launched a ‘new’ process for its alumni.

Over a 100 of students of the school had reportedly expressed displeasure through a social media platform what they termed as frustrating the process of getting their academic transcripts, years after graduation.

The institution’s alumni said they missed international academic admissions and scholarships due to the frustrating processes put in place by the school before they could get their academic transcripts.

Apart from missing out from such global opportunities due to the failure of the school and etx.ng, an online consultant it engaged for the process, to send the transcripts before the specified deadlines, many ex-students said they were also not refunded monies they paid for the service.

The University, in a statement on Friday, reproduced below, says it has begun a new process to address the hurdles faced.

Press statement

This is to inform all students and alumni of Obafemi Awolowo University as well as the general public that the approved channel for making transcript applications is at tps.oauife.edu.ng.

Transactions with any individual, agent, or company through payment of cash or any other means outside of the approved channel are prohibited.

Prospective applicants are strongly encouraged to make their applications by themselves to forestall avoidable delays for which the University will not be liable.

For further enquiries, kindly contact transcript@oauife.edu.ng.

Signed

Director, Academic Affairs

Some schools in Northern Ireland are to be alerted by police if pupils have been affected by domestic violence.

The move is part of a scheme called Operation Encompass which is being piloted in 60 schools in County Down.

Before each school day, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), will alert schools if any pupils have been affected by an incident of violence in the home in the previous 24 hours.

The scheme has been in operation in police forces in England and Wales for a number of years.

It will eventually be rolled out across all schools in Northern Ireland.

The scheme is a partnership between the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the Safeguarding Board Northern Ireland (SBNI), the Education Authority (EA) and schools.

It has come into effect due to new domestic abuse laws being introduced in Northern Ireland.

Incidents of domestic abuse and violence in Northern Ireland have spiraled in recent years.

Operation Encompass aims to help get children affected by domestic violence immediate emotional support in school.

The Governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle, has expressed dismay over the abduction of 15 students and staff of the state’s College of Agriculture and Animal Sciences in Bakura Local Government Area of the state.

The governor in a statement issued by his spokesperson, Yusuf Idris, said the state was determined to rescue the students unhurt.

He said the government has been strengthening its capacity to provide security to schools across the state since the abduction of Jangebe school girls.

The statement reads in part “The governor directed security operatives in the state to intensify efforts and rescue the abductees, promising to do everything humanly possible to rescue them unhurt,”

“Governor Matawalle who is seriously saddened with the resurgence of school abduction in the state by recalcitrant bandits is, however, thankful to God for the prompt response of the security agencies to the school to reinforce the already stationed security at the school.

“The timely response of the security agents led to the successful rescue of three out of the four abducted staffs of the institution. The governor also lauded the immediate action embarked on by the security of search and rescue strategies in order to ensure the safe rescue of the abducted students and staff currently in captivity…”

Governor Matawalle has appealed to the citizens of the state to remain calm as government is taking all the necessary steps to restore normalcy in the area and charged inhabitants to cooperate with the security agencies deployed to the area by providing them with useful information leading to the rescue of the victims.

He further called on citizens to intensify prayers for an end of all criminal activities in the state and the nation at large.

The Governor extended his condolences to families of those killed by the bandits including a police man and two civilian security guards during the attack, while reassuring parents of the abducted students that his government will intensify efforts to rescue them.

The federal government is intensifying efforts in Ondo and Osun States in South-west Nigeria to ensure accurate and comprehensive coverage of Primary schools in the ongoing School Feeding Programme.

The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, explained that there is need for a continued capturing exercise with about 108,842 primary school pupils already in its data base.

The Ondo State Team leader, Kemisola Olasetemi, explained that the biometric capturing of the pupils would help in data management and efficient implementation.

Olasetemi confirmed that the exercise will be an ongoing process, noting that N1.8b has been spent in the last three years to cater for pupils in Ondo State under the NHGSF program.

Meanwhile, Osun State has also commenced the enumeration of 95,983 pupils across primary schools under the school feeding program.

The State Coordinator, Taiwo Bashorun, who spoke during the verification process in Ifon/Ilobu (Orolu Local Government Area) disclosed that 1,460 schools were currently enjoying the feeling programme.

He said the Ministry also partnered with the National Orientation Agency, NOA, and the National Youth Service Corps to engage Corps members in the distribution of forms and capture of the data.

The Coordinators expressed satisfaction over the exercise which they said will motivate parents and guardians to register their children in schools for quality education.

In a bid to unravel and tackle some of the fallouts from the School Feeding Programme, the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has deployed a task force to Ebonyi and Enugu States respectively.

The move is geared towards strengthening and institutionalizing the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, introduced under the President Muhammadu Buhari led administration.

The Minister, Sadiya Umar Farouq said the verification and enrolment drive across the country was targeted at not just the schools and pupils, but also at vendors and cooks to ensure an efficient operation and provision of balanced meals for children.

The Minister said the government has embarked on an enumeration exercise with a view to verifying the existing data of the benefitting pupils on the program as provided by each benefiting state, update the database with accurate data and ultimately scale up the program to reach more beneficiaries across the Nation.

She added that the Ministry has continued to partner with all relevant agencies and parastatals to ensure adequate sensitisation, data capturing and execution in the bid to ensure all-round efficiency.

Umar Farouq said “We have therefore devised this as a multi sectoral intervention with partners such as the State National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) officers, National Orientation Agency, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), National Population Commission of Nigeria, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and Universal Basic Education across the states.”

The Minister, through the Ebonyi State Coordinator, Sunday Mbam revealed that 95 million Naira was spent in the year under review with 64,301 pupils as beneficiaries.

Mbam noted with optimism that the exercise will tackle and address the challenges confronting the programme in the State as well as open a vista to accommodate more schools.

In Enugu State, the Minister who represented by the Team Lead of the State Monitoring and Enumeration of the programme, Adanne Wadibia-Anyanwu, said that government has engaged 1,532 cooks who supply the daily meals to public primary schools within the State.

At the enumeration and monitoring exercise at Igbariam Primary School in Achara Layout, Enugu, Wadibia-Anyanwu revealed that the Federal Government spends about N7, 998,270 daily in feeding of a total of 114,261 pupils in public primary schools within the State.

The Team Lead further stated that the programme had impacted junior primary pupils in 799 public schools within the 17 council areas.

The ministry reveals that plans are in top gear to enroll additional 5 million pupils into its National Home Grown School Feeding Programme by 2023.

Prime Minister of Egypt, Mostafa Madbouli, says the government attaches great importance to technology education.

He revealed this during a meeting with Japan’s National Institute of Technology (KOSEN) to discuss how to promote mutual cooperation.

Launched in 1962, the Japanese “KOSEN” formal education system sought to provide students with in-depth technical knowledge and skills, thus cultivating the abilities required in their professional fields.

Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat, Presidential Adviser for National Security Faiza Abou el-Naga, former minister of higher education Hani Hilal, and Secretary General of the Education Development Fund Ahmed Al-Hayawi attended the meeting.

The premier noted that Egypt now has three specialized technological universities, and several more are still under construction nationwide,.

According to Cabinet Spokesman Nader Saad, the meeting discussed lessons learned from other countries’ experience in applying the KOSEN program, especially in Thailand and Vietnam.

It also tackled the mechanisms of future cooperation with Japan to apply the KOSEN program in Egypt, given the country’s need of highly skillful workers.

The first 12 KOSEN colleges were founded in 1962, and the number increased to 43 by 1965 in response to a strong demand from the industrial sector to foster engineers who sustained the high Japanese economic growth in the wake of World War II.

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson has promised that the government will try to help 35 Afghan students get visas to travel to the UK, after they were blocked by the Foreign Office from taking up prestigious British scholarships this year.

Amid concerns among the students that their scholarships could make them targets of the Taliban, the prime minister intervened to say efforts would be made to accelerate their visas, hours after the Foreign Office defended its decision to prevent them taking up places this September.

Initially, the Foreign Office said it was deferring their Chevening scholarships for a year because it could not manage to administer their visas at the embassy in Kabul, which is now being evacuated.

The students were given the news this month in a letter from the British ambassador to Kabul, Sir Laurie Bristow.

The move prompted outrage, with David Lidington and Rory Stewart, two former Conservative cabinet ministers, calling on the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, to intervene.

Pressed on the issue of the scholars, Johnson told Sky News on Sunday: “We do want to make sure they are able to come and so we are doing whatever we can to accelerate their visas to get them over as well.”

The Kabul elements of the programme that the embassy could no longer complete include travel administration and visa processing.

Last Thursday, the students held a virtual meeting with officials in the UK embassy in Kabul were they put forward alternatives for the final administration of their scholarships, including having their visas processed in a third country. These options were at the time rejected by the embassy.

The students are unwilling to speak publicly about their situation, anxious not to jeopardise their scholarships, but also out of worry of being identifiable to the Taliban.

Several of the students are members of vulnerable ethnic and religious minorities, some have previously been displaced by Taliban violence, and their association with British universities could make them particular targets.

The students are hopeful their scholarships will only be deferred, but they are deeply concerned it could be impossible to leave Afghanistan in a year’s time.

School and college leaders in the United Kingdom have condemned the government’s plan to ban mobile phones from classrooms as outdated and out of touch, arguing that schools should be allowed to decide on appropriate rules.

Responding to a Department for Education (DfE) consultation on student behaviour, the Association of School and College Leaders said education leaders already had student mobile phone use under control and warned that some students, such as those caring for a relative, may be disadvantaged by a strict approach.

The director of policy at ASCL, Julie McCulloch, said that school and college leaders are slightly mystified about the education secretary’s fixation with banning mobile phones in classrooms because they have been dealing with the practicalities of this issue for many years now.

She added: “Our view remains that schools and colleges already have strong tried-and-tested policies and they are best placed to make their own decisions.”

McCulloch said schools typically asked students to keep their phones in their bags during the academic day, while some had policies allowing pupils to use their phones to help with learning and sourcing information adding that having access to phones also enabled secondary schools to teach about responsible phone use and online harms.

She added that for some learners, such as children in the care system, mobile phones could be an “essential safety measure”, while young carers might need them to “provide essential support to parents”.

In its consultation response, ASCL also reported that some of the emergency measures deployed during the pandemic had helped with antisocial behaviour, with some schools and colleges planning to keep them.

These included staggering the end of the school day, keeping pupils in peer group bubbles, having more time outdoors and appointing older pupils as mentors to support younger ones.

The response also endorsed the use of quiet spaces within schools and colleges for pupils exhibiting difficult behaviour, but criticised the DfE’s use of the term “removal room” as “unhelpful and stigmatising” and warned that their use could be particularly inappropriate for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

The Ministry of Education and the National Land Commission (NLC) have been sued over a parcel of land where Kiembeni Baptist Primary School stands.

The plaintiff, Abdulrahman Mohammed, who is also the school’s board of management chairman, wants ministry officials to be temporarily restrained from converting, dealing with or changing the management of the school.

Mohammed whose children attend the school in Bamburi, also wants the school’s board to be allowed to start enrolling pupils in vacant streams in nursery to Standard Seven.

The High Court had previously ordered the ministry to register Kiembeni Baptist as a private school.

Mohammed said Registered Trustees of Baptist Convention of Kenya had obtained court orders including that the operation of the school by the ministry without their consent violated their rights to property on the land.

He says in court papers that the ministry failed to implement the orders and when asked to explain their inaction, said county officials had failed to submit the necessary application and consent under Section 15 of the Education Act.

Mohamed, who has also sued the Attorney-General, says further orders were issued in 2015 barring the ministry from registering new pupils.

He claims that the court said the ministry was at liberty to pursue a review application, which, if successful, would allow Kiembeni Baptist to revert to a public school.

Mohammed says the ministry had not taken any steps to move to court for a hearing of a review application despite having been granted the liberty to do.

The petitioner says that since admissions were frozen in 2015, the school has only one stream, which consists of Standard Seven pupils.

He further explained that the school has teachers who have no work despite drawing salaries from the Teachers Service Commission.

NLC’s inaction, he says, has enhanced uncertainty over the status of the school, with children losing out.

He wants the court to declare that inaction by the ministry and NLC are a gross violation of the children’s right to free and compulsory basic education.

The NLC’s failure to issue its findings, he says, should be declared a gross violation of the right to property.