Fitcharis International Schools where Morals and Quality Education Speaks Volume.
The educational sector of a nation is one of the most critical, but over the years, this sector has suffered neglect and poor funding from government, which had an adverse effect on public primary and secondary schools in the country. Government budget over the years has not placed top priority on education; hence, we continue to struggle as a nation to produce quality graduates as a result of poor facilities, poor learning environment and most importantly poor funding.
For instance, the federal government of Nigeria allocated N691.07billion constituting 6.7 percent to the federal ministry of education in the 2020 budget, the sum includes the statutory transfer to the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) which is N111.79 billion, however N620.5 billion which is 7.05 percent of total estimate was allocated to the education ministry in the 2019 budget.
In all this permutation, some private schools are striving, setting up quality and adequate facilities, qualified teachers and providing an enabling environment for learning.
As the herald of education, EDUCARE NEWS beamed it search light on Fit Charis College, we caught up with Mrs Hilda, Head of Schools and who doubles as the General Manager Fit Charis College.
In an exclusive telephone interview with EDUCARE NEWS, Mrs. Kalu describes the school as a place where learning and reading can be fun all day, because they have a conducive environment, quality facilities, qualified and quality teachers, standard laboratories and adequate trainings for their teachers.
“our environment and classrooms are conducive with air-conditions and CCT cameras that covers what the children are doing, we have television that help us to learn visuals, so that the children can learn more, our teachers have Montessori materials that they use to teach the children, that is an added advantage.”
The General Manager also discloses to us that, though, Fit Charis is a christian school, it does not discriminate other religion.
“We are a Christian school, even as a Christian school, we have lots of muslims in our school, we don’t force them to change their religion, it is just that academically, we do our part as a Christian school”
With the poor state of most public schools, lacking basic infrastructures and facilities, most parents seems to be looking at private schools who have the desired facilities and standard as an alternative, however this always come at a hefty cost, and parents often decry the high cost of fees, but the amiable Mrs Kalu disagrees.
“our school fees is pocket friendly, for our services and the kind of training we give to our teachers, we train them in Nigeria and outside Nigeria, our fees are pocket friendly, believe me.”
She further explained that the performance of their students during National Competitions has been very encouraging.
“we have participated in up to three, and we have been coming out with one of the best grade, the last one we participated in, one of our student by name Ibukun, in the essay writing competitions return with the third place position, the other one our students got second and third positions.”
Despite all the successes achieved by the school in its five years of existence, it has also come with some challenges, this Mrs. Kalu clearly confirmed“ Our challenge is when people around us don’t really know what we are given out, when some of parents don’t really value those things it is a challenge, the school invest so much in these facilities, and when people don’t value them it is a challenge, also, if government can remove some of the fees impose on private schools, I believe it will help them grow more.”
With coronavirus threatening the operation of private and public schools in the country, Fit Charis has gone the e-learning way.
“We did not shutdown, we are using the online platforms to reach the students, we are adopting e-learning now for our students, initially, when we started, it was not really convenient for some of them, but as time goes on they started adapting.”
Fit Charis is a Christian school that was established in 2015, the acronym FIT was generated from the names FAVOUR- IBUKUN- TIMILEHIN.
An elated Mrs. Hilda predicted where Fit Charis will be in the next 10years.
“in the last 5years we have gotten to the height, we have three locations, in 10years I see Fit Charis in almost all the state in Nigeria, and also having a University” she concluded.