Spelling Bee: Female Contestants Clear Prize Stable

The academic duel which held at Iseyin District Grammar School, Iseyin featured twenty public secondary schools within the local government was sponsored by Folashade Agoro-Braimoh Foundation, a nonpolitical organization in Oyo State.

Ekunnimo Kehinde of St.John’s Grammar School, Iseyin came first with twelve (12) points, Adekunle Zainab of Aseyin High School scored ten (10) points to come second while Oloyede Hamida from Ansar-ud-deen Grammar, School, Iseyin came third with eight (8) points.

The Chairperson of the occasion, Mrs Felicia Shiyanbola said Spelling Bee competition was a powerful tool to redirect students’ interest towards reading and aggressive studying.

She appreciated the efforts of the foundation towards bringing back the lost educational glory in the state by organizing such contest, donating literature books to schools’ libraries and giving scholarship awards to indigent students in the community, saying it was in tandem with the State government’s Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) policy towards revamping education.

“The efforts of Folashade Agoro-Braimoh Foundation towards bringing back the lost glory of education in Oyo State, we can see this to be in line with the State’s PPP education policy as government alone cannot fund education among other social infrastructures.

“Academic duels like spelling bee encourages our students to read ahead of their class curriculum and discover new vocabularies to form their expressions.”

Mrs Shiyanbola who is also a school Principal added 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.

He called for more of such programs which he said would expose students to average of twenty new vocabularies per day which if used to form sentences and expressions would help the individual student to master the language.

Alhazan called for more support for public schools from those with financial capacity so as to bridge the gap between students in public schools and their counterparts in private schools.

“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,” he quipped.

The Chairman, Nigeria Union of Teachers (N.U.T), Comrade Adewuyi was part of the program as the union collaborated with FABF for the success of the program called on teachers to make spelling competition part of the school curriculum as the student’s ability to spell, pronounce and understand each word would go a long way in the student’s power to grasp the concept of each topic being taught by teacher.