The Bayelsa State Education Development Trust Fund (BEDTF) on Thursday, December 9, said it is making progress with its efforts to improve the education sector in the state.
Executive Secretary of the agency, Alice Atuwo, stated this when members of the publicity committee of BEDTF, visited the office of the Federated Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in Yenagoa.
She stated that the BEDTF’s mandate includes ensuring the feeding of students in 11 public boarding model schools across the eight local government areas, maintenance of the schools as well as payment of West African Examination Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council (NECO) fees for prospective students.
Atuwo further disclosed that the BEDTF had also carried out intervention in the area of training and re-training of public school teachers in collaboration with the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria.
According to her, 650 teachers had benefited so far from such training while a new batch was scheduled for next year.
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She listed the institutions the agency had also provided interventions to include the state-owned Niger Delta University (NDU), the University of Africa and the Bayelsa Medical University.
She said: “At the time of our inauguration there were five existing public model schools but today we have 11 of them, at least one in each of the local government areas, including the Sports Academy and the Ijaw National Academy.
“The students that we sponsor, it is the Ministry of Education that runs those schools with the Post-Primary Schools Board, we do not implement any programme but we only sponsor as an interventionist agency.
“The feeding and running of the schools and maintenance of the model schools take about 80% of our income but the law does not limit us only to the model secondary schools, it’s for education, that is from primary to tertiary, so we also have intervention in tertiary institutions”.
Atuwo was accompanied by the Chairman of the committee and veteran journalist, Fidelis Agbiki, secretary, Seiyefa Koinyan and a former state chairman of the NUJ, John Angese, among other members of the committee.
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