BIG money private schools like Dowen College are a big deal to their patrons, matrons, and admirers of the creme de la creme. They almost convince you that good schools must be costly. These schools charge between ₦1.5 million and ₦5 million per academic session. Education is not cheap, but it does not have to be hazardous. Dowen promises adequately equipped faculties with comprehensive modern teaching and learning facilities of international standard to ensure academic and vocational excellence, but they have delivered tragedy to the friends and family of Sylvester Oromoni Junior.
What then is the big deal about schools like Dowen? Dowen College and many other big money secondary schools offer curricula modelled after the British curriculum or the American high school system. Their students are always prepared for an international university education and most students go to have undergraduate studies in American or British universities by default.
Parents enrol children in these schools for the exclusive networking opportunities that are available in small classes with children of business tycoons or celebrities. They believe that their wards will be saved from the experience of learning with the have-nots and economically insignificant persons. Of course, parents also expect great grades in their General Certificate Examinations and A levels. So, the pupils get enough attention from specially trained teachers in small classrooms.
With the exception of a specialised curriculum and the obviously costly tuition fees, these expensive private secondary schools are not different from the elite public secondary schools we have in the country. Kings College and Queens College alone have more graduates with stellar achievements than a third of the elite private secondary schools in Lagos. Unity schools around the country equally boast of illustrious alumni.
Dowen is also confirming the fears of gruesome bullying and child neglect in private secondary schools which has been a known problem in public secondary schools from time immemorial. It is becoming clear that you can take the man from the street but you cannot take the street from the man. Students with bad behaviour are unhindered by the opulence of their school, the morals of such pupils are no different from those of students from other schools.
While big money private schools provide a student with a community of fellow students from wealthy backgrounds and an exposure rarely attained in other schools, they still fail to protect their students from the crude realities of the society they aim to hide.
Students are excelling in both private and public schools but exorbitant school fees still fail to wash vices into virtues in big money secondary schools. On this one, Dowen College has proved to be an example too hard to beat.
