Rotimi Agboluaje, Ibadan
It was a surprising contest when female contestants bested their male counterparts energing first, second and third.
Ekunnimo Kehinde of St.John’s Grammar School, Iseyin came first with 12 points, Adekunle Zainab of Aseyin High School scored 10 points to come second and Oloyede Hamida from Ansar-ud-deen Grammar, School, Iseyin came third with 8 points.
Sponsored by Folashade Agoro-Braimoh Foundation, a nonpolitical organization in the state, the academic competition which held at Iseyin District Grammar School, Iseyin featured 20 public secondary schools within the local government.
Mrs. Felicia Shiyanbola, the Chairperson of the occasion, remarked that the Spelling Bee competition was a powerful tool to redirect students’ interest towards reading and aggressive studying.
Appreciating the efforts of the foundation towards bringing back the lost educational glory in the state by organizing such contest, she donated literature books to schools’ libraries and awarded scholarship to indigent students in the community.
According to her: “The efforts of Folashade Agoro-Braimoh Foundation towards bringing back the lost glory of education in Oyo State is in line with the state’s PPP education policy as government alone cannot fund education among other social infrastructures.
“Academic contests like spelling bee encourage our students to read ahead of their class curriculum and discover new vocabularies to form their expressions,” She said.
Mrs. Shiyanbola who is also a school Principal emphasized that the choice of portable generator for the first position would engender more support from the parents for the student as they would be encouraged to do more.
The coordinator of the program, Mr. Abiodun Alhazan said the contest was meant to re-draw the approach of educationists towards getting students to read more.
Alhazan called for more of such programs, which he said, would expose students to average of 20 new vocabularies per day which if used to form sentences and expressions would help the individual student to master the language.
On restricting the contest to public schools, he said: “People asked that why didn’t we involve private schools and I told them that students in private schools already have an edge over our brothers and sisters in public schools, you can see that the three positions of first, second and third were taken by female contestants, that is another pointer to the fact that we need to look into reasons why male students are performing poorly in public schools”.
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