UI students decry new compulsory fee for teaching practice

Students of Faculty of Education at the University of Ibadan, have lamented the recent policy by the management to implement a compulsory payment of N5,000 by penultimate and final year students going for teaching practice exercise.

The teaching practice exercise is a six-week sessional activity embarked on by students in 300 and 400 levels in the faculty. The objective is to bridge the class-practice gap.

CAMPUS REPORTER correspondents gathered that while the faculty has commenced the sessional exercise several years ago, this is the first time students will be asked to pay a sum of N5,000 for the exercise, which on its own, is a course in the faculty’s curriculum.

However, students have expressed their dissatisfaction towards the development. students who spoke with CAMPUS REPORTER’ correspondents said the expenses concerning the teaching practice exercise itself are drilling big holes in their pockets and now they have to pay a compulsory fee for the exercise.

“I don’t see any reason why we final year students should pay, said a student, only identified as Esther. “It doesn’t make any sense. there’s no substantial justification for the 5,000 we are paying.”

Another student from the Department of Counseling and Human Development Studies said: “we are to go for the exercise twice and we are not even given something for offering our services and now we are going to pay again, this is quite bad.”

The spokesperson for the education students’ association, Akinlade Oluwatobi, quoted the dean of the faculty, Julius Ademokoya as saying the fee was imposed by the university to cater for the mobilisation of lecturers who go the schools inspect teaching practice students.

The dean was to have explained that the lack of support from the government and the poor condition of the exercise were the major reasons which led to policy. He said that lecturers who embark on supervisory roles for the success of the exercise should get teaching practice allowance from the government, but such is not the case.

Professor Ademokoya made it known that the development should not be seen as an imposition because it was tabled during the last parents-management meeting in the school and students should not see it as a surprise, as some other faculties have implemented theirs.

Meanwhile, medical students were also asked to pay an N85,000 “health professional levy” as a condition to write the ongoing first-semester examinations. Those who could not meet the payment deadline were made to sign an undertaking to pay later.

However, students in the faculty of education have not started paying the newly-introduced teaching practice levy.