'Back to School' frenzy:
Economy of Education as the power of Private School Proprietors
Razaq A. Jimoh for The Colloquium Tabloid
Help your staff with convenience
of teaching & Planning. Get your
School's copies now . Click
below to Know more:
IT’S the new season
again! It’s the time! It’s the period!
It is the time when the velocity of money in
circulation is faster than normal, as the Nation and its people come under frenzy.
In fact, it is this frenzy that triggers the money to high speed on exchange
from hand to hand, and hardly settles on any portal of the concerned
stakeholders until mid-term of the season’s quarter. It is the time of ‘Back to
School’ with its associated frenzy.
 |
| A new investment in education in cost value not less than N15million |
It is also another period in a process of
nation building through added value in raising the future leaders and citizens
for the future challenges of making the country compatible with any emerging
global order.
And it is the new school season. It is the
beginning of a new academic year. On the Gregorian calendar, the academic year
runs in entity of a period across two calendar years. That is why an academic
session takes an identity of two calendar years stroked together. Here we are
to welcome pupils and students back to school for the 2012/2013 academic
session.
The frenzy of the season has been in the air
effective from late August, but hardly noticeable to the public because only
the school catches the bug with preparations to put itself on the competitive
edge over others.
 |
| Renics College completed this new structure in May, 2012, The estimated cost value is put at N55million |
On a general note, back to school frenzy catches
every stakeholder in education: the parent, teacher, school administrators, and
government; extending to service/products providers. And like I said, the
common denominator of this frenzy is the cash flow across the stakeholder
portals, running into big spending on institutional bases. Even this cash flow
model cycle of the education sector has sits leakages from systemic corruption
and extortion by bandits as non-economic spending in process of valuating the contributions
of education sector to the Nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and National
income. I shall make this clearer for readers understanding in due course as we
look into the activities of these stakeholders at this frenzy time in separate
group of their social institutional identity as The School, The Home,
and The Government; and the fourth
realm of the group – The Education Support Businesses (ESB) that include publishers, producers of instructional
materials, service providers in profits and non-profits supports to schools.
 |
| A teacher attending to parents on inquiries about admissions |
I have said the frenzy time actually begins
earlier than late September. It catches the school first often a month earlier
– about mid-August – and infectiously grows insidiously to manifestation peak on
September when the home catches the bug from imperative necessity.
For the school, it’s the time when the
managerial competence and creativity of the school management is challenged;
the time the schools’ Chief Executive Officer – popularly called proprietor -- is
tasked and tested in prudent deployment of the school resources in both
monetary and human capital to achieve a good result in placing the school at a
competitive advantage over the neighbourhood competitor schools. In fact, a
school CEO that knows his/her onions must be on the alert and ready for a new
competitor anytime of the year in this time when the government had gone to
sleep over regulation of establishment of school.
I know for sure in time past of my active
years as school administrator, the guideline for establishing a school given to
me when I sought to come out clearly spelt our geographical boundary for
schools’ competitive neighborhood. It emphasized that no new school shall come
up or be approved for operations within a 500-meter radius of an existing approved
school. But that rule has gone rotten with the rots in the regulatory function
of the ministries of education across the nation.
The
Economy of Education in contribution to National Income
Preparing to receive students back to school,
the focus of the school management is to attract and retain the interests of
households in optimum number it can get form homes around its settlements.
Therefore, what takes pre-eminence is infrastructural renewal.
 |
| Newly painted Child's Fountain School, Gowon Estate. |
Schools commit a lot of funds at this time to
renew, replace, replenish and add more to either the building or school’s
material needs. A sizeable chunk is also invested in publicity only. I say
publicly only because virtually all school administrator never comes to
deliberate conscious building of the school as a brand, which is generally a
systemic process involving a blend of unique culture and policy with the
identity of the school. Yet a school with confirmed brand needs less publicity for
annual renewal of its presence in the minds of parents. Rather, the parents
identify with the brand and flaunt it in pride to the envy of other households.
This is how brand building translates to assets in publicity annually. That is
why brand building for school is an easy but as well a complex network of
mutual trust building and shared understanding between the school and its
parents. The pain of the school in it is patience -- patience with deliberate
downplay of interest in profit. We shall create time for a discourse on brand
building in future.
With infrastructure renewal, the Paint
Industry is one sector of the economy that gains from the annual back to school
frenzy. In statistics collation The Colloquium Tabloid made, it was
said that over 116 schools were found to be retouching their building with new
paints in Apapa/Ajeromi Local Government Area as at mid September. I personally
counted 22 in Ipaja/Oke-odo axis of Alimosho LG. I recall having to revisit Child’s
Fountain School on Egbeda Road end of Gowon Estate to retake a photograph of
the building when it wore a new look of bright milk colour afterwards out of
this frenzy. The Headmaster of the School confided in me that the workmanship
of the painter alone was N56,000.
 |
| Rising Stars School, Unity Estate, is a new entrant with investment not less in millions of Naira |
In like manner, not a few new entrants in
school establishment were recorded. Of course, each came out in its own big way,
limited only by the size of its capital outlay of which painters and paint
industry could not have taken latter attention. To paint only comes after the
building construction at which stage, Manson, bricklayers, sand and gravel
suppliers, tipper drivers, tiles layer, material merchants, furniture makers,
iron benders and others of abstract contributions to the construction could
have drawn a financial power to add values to their households. How else is an
investment made?
In initial capital outlay, the blazers
schools, Sovereign Lord Int’l Academy and Rising Stars International schools
could not have injected a combined investment funds less than N100million,
which is just still a decimal in contribution of education to the National
Income.
 |
| Makers of these furniture made economic gains from investment of a new school |
At operations, with minimal staff strength of
10 on roll, these three schools will be scaling down unemployment within
Egbeda-Idimu axis by 30 points of human unit. Book publishers with good reach, stationeries
and teaching aides’ suppliers are sure to raise sales volume.
In the language of figure for direct and
simple clarity, the private schools in Lagos State alone will be injecting
about N2.4 billion into the economy of the state between mid Augusts to
September ending. I have left out the likes of Renics College et al who added
giant three-story building to its structures way back May of this year. Therefore,
this figure is yet a modest empirical fact -- extremely modest so to say.
 |
| Check it out, Kingsville no longer look this old |
Let’s get the substance right: Official
figure released by the state puts the total schools operating in Lagos at
12,713. Leave out the extra 713 as Public Schools to put the total private
schools at 12,000, bearing in mind that those that made the list could have being
of average to government’s interest. Therefore, in all material values
enunciated above, a fund committed to the frenzy by the schools is about N200,000
in average to make up the total figure. Of course, this figure still excludes
direct cash flow into the state treasury soon to begin in tax and annual due
remittances. Yet these proprietors cringe, shivers and crawl before government
officials as Lord. This brings out the worrisome question: Do proprietors of
private school realize their economic values and power at all? Let’s take a
break.
Send your comment in SMS to 08092213955 or
e-mail to thecolloquiumtabloid@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment