Students in public schools in Oyo State have been charged to use the opportunities provided by the present State administration to improve on their academic performance as there existed no more excuses for the students to stay out of school.

The Director of Personnel, Oyo State Teaching Service Commission (TESCOM), Mr Kolapo Abd-Rahman who said this while on monitoring of various public schools in the State on Monday was accompanied by a consultant to the State government on education, Prof. Kolapo Olusola and other officials of the commission.

Abd-Rahman emphasized the need for the students to seize the opportunity presented by the free education policy of the State as well as free textbooks and notebooks recently distributed by the Seyi Makinde-led administration to improve their performance in public examinations.

He called on those still roaming the street or engaging in learning of craft as a result of non-availability of fund to pay school fees and buy educational materials to return to school as the inputs have been made available by government while education to post-primary level had been declared free in the State.

“I want to call on those students that are still out there to come back to school as there is no more excuse for any of them to be out of school. The present administration has put in place enough incentives to make education attractive to our students.

“Nobody asks them to pay any fee any more and textbooks and notebooks are being distributed for free, so what is it that you will say is holding you back from having good education?

“The target of the government is to bring back all those that have left school because of payment of school fees and inability to buy books. Now that those are no more their worries, they should face the next level, which is to attend classes and improve in their performances in external examinations.”

Abd-Rahman also added that the idea of free lesson for secondary school students was to afford the students the opportunity to have more time to study and make up for the lost academic time due to their last holiday and the need to take the overall performance of the State to a commendable level.

“Governor Makinde’s commitment towards improving education by introducing “Government Intervention Lecture” for students in Senior Secondary School 3 (SSS 3) in form of extra lesson between Mondays and Thursdays by 2:30 to 4:30pm and on Saturdays between 9:00am to 1pm should be appreciated by our students and this can only be done by high margin of academic improvement.

“The style of teaching at the lesson will be different from the normal classes because the State has produced a compendium of past questions, covering eleven different subjects from year 2012 to 2018 which teachers will be using in those specific hours to teach our SS.3 students on how to answer WAEC questions.

“In fact and interestingly, the compendium will not only be given to public secondary schools students alone but also those children attending Private schools,” he added.

He then called on parents and students that the the ball is in their court to see this as a golden opportunity and reciprocate the government’s good gesture to make themselves be available, respond appropriately and suspend any trade they might have been learning as soon as the lessons commence by the second week of October.

Among the schools visited are Ikolaba High School, Ikolaba, Ibadan,  Abadina College, U.I and Community Secondary School, all within Ibadan.