…as institution holds Open Day 2025
By Ime Silas
The principal of St. Columbanus Secondary School, Ikwen (SCOSSI) in Obot Akara LGA of Akwa Ibom State; Rev. Fr. Emem Umoren Ph.D, has stated that academic excellence, discipline and moral formation were amongst the special features making the the school a unique and much-sought-after institution.
Dr. Umoren who made this disclosure on Thursday during a Media chat with select journalists in his office on the sidelines of this year’s SCOSSI Open Day, also urged parents to secure their children’s future by putting them in good schools with proven academic and moral standards.
“Academic excellence, discipline, moral formation, spiritual formation. All our children here know that without God, nothing can work. These are the features that make us unique.
For instance, every term, we give them some values they must look out for. Like this term, there’s something we call ‘HERIS’. It’s an abbreviation for Hard wok, Excellence, Responsibility, Innovation and Service.
Everyone of them knows and tries to work towards living out these values. These are the things that propel us and we are very conscious of them”.
He used the occasion to inform the general public on the forthcoming entrance examination into the school.
On the SCOSSI Open Day and its significance, Rev
Fr. Emem said: “This event is very significant. It is our initiative to put this together. This is the second year we are floating this and we call it ‘SODES’. It’s an acronym for SCOSSI Open Day for Emerging Stars. And SCOSSI you know is the acronym for St. Columbanus Secondary School Ikwen.
In other words, it is ‘St. Columbanus Secondary School, Ikwen Open Day for Emerging Stars. And, this is 2025 edition. We had it for the first time last year and it’s been our initiative to bring together young minds and give them opportunity to distinguish themselves so that we can help them understand that there is some stardom awaiting them.
Especially, in the context of admission. You know, we need younger ones to come from nursery schools to our secondary school. So, we created this forum as an open day for parents and for pupils, to allow those who intend to come in and see St Columbanus; to come in and first of all have an idea of what it looks like.
“We have opened our doors to everybody who comes in today. They can go to anywhere in the compound. You can go, first of all, for academic matters before other things. You can go to the library, you can go to the labs, you can go to the physics lab, chemistry Lab, biology Lab, computer lab, the knowledge centre.
You can go to the classrooms, you can go to the infirmary, you can get to the chapel, you can even go to the dormitory.
There are only two days we allow this to happen; that is to allow parents to go to anywhere in St Columbanus. And the two days are the Open Day like today, the second day is the day you drop off your child for the first time in our school. It is an opportunity to tell parents to come and see how good or bad we are”.
On the need for government to supervise schools for effectiveness, the SCOSSI principal noted: “Provide enabling environment for our children to compete educationally with anybody outside here. It’s not enough to build infrastructures in schools.
It’s not enough to bring in even the best of teachers. It is important that some supervision, some objective supervision of what is done in schools, is carried out by an objective body.
And, the best way to know if you are doing well is not to allow the subject teacher to give them an examination of ‘one plus one’ and they say ‘two’. Allow people from outside to give them external exams. Let there be some genuine and objective competition. When there’s competition, it would create confidence in children and they would come out better”.
Answering questions on the federal government’s proposed scrapping of the 6-3-3-4 system of education in Nigeria, Rev. Fr. Emem advised the government to carry out thorough assessment before taking final decision on the matter.
“I wish our country would allow the educationist to take care of education matters. It wouldn’t be bad to change. But you don’t begin to change until you have assessed the system to see how it worked or did not work, and you have assessed the new system to see how it could be better.
However, I want to believe that the government is still doing that because this was a proposal. It has not yet been approved. And if they have to approve it, they have to be able to tell us the difference, because more or less, there’s no difference.
We had the 6-3-3-4 system but they now want to change it to a 12-4 system. It’s happening in the US, no doubt. I have students who have come, with all due respect to them, from the US, may be from grade 8, and are not able to make it to JSS1.
So, it depends on the curriculum and what you teach. Therefore, it’s not enough to just swallow it all, just because it’s happening in the US or in Europe. This is Nigeria and Africa”.
