Bauchi students protest against separation of boys from girls [PHOTO]

Students in Bauchi State, on Monday, staged a protest over the decision of the state government to separate boys from girls in schools.

The students matched in their numbers within Bauchi metropolis, demanding that the decision be reversed.

The Bauchi commissioner for education, Mr Aliyu Tilde, had Friday fortnight ago, said the state government had concluded plans to separate male and female students in secondary schools in the state.

Tilde who stated this while addressing newsmen after the State Executive Council (SEC) meeting in Bauchi, noted that the idea was to address moral decadence, which he said had become prevalent among students of secondary schools.

According to him, private schools would take a cue from the initiative and separate their males who would be attending their academic activities in one institution and the females in another separate institution.

The commissioner further explained that where they cannot be separated completely, their seating arrangement would be in such a manner that the males would occupy one side of a classroom and the females at the other side of the classroom.

“The most important thing is that we don’t want to undo the progress that we have made in the past on girl-child education by allowing this trend to continue,” he had said.

“We came up with an idea, let us extend that 1978 abrogation of core education policy to cover our Day secondary schools as well, wherever and whenever it is possible.

“Wherever it is possible, is talking about the geography and whenever is possible is talking about the distribution in time. That is, maybe it is possible tomorrow or not in terms of separating them completely.

“Wherever is possible is where perhaps we have two day secondary schools within the same vicinity, we’ll allocate one to girls and the other to boys.”