Students record technological breakthroughs at Zaria Academy

The current clamour in the country is the replacement of theoretical learning in schools with functional education that will make students self-reliant and wealth creators rather than mere job seekers. Today, most schools are far from meeting this expectation.
But what students are doing at Zaria Academy, Kaduna State definitely beams a ray of hope on the beleaguered education sector.

At the secondary school, students are not just learning introductory technology, physics and the sciences theoretically, they are actually using their knowledge of the subjects to make various technological inventions, using available local materials.

Useni Musa Salisu, a sixteen year-old JSS 3 student, is one of the students of the school who has made a technological breakthrough by inventing an Inverter which is used to generate power. The device, which uses a rechargeable battery, can power a fan, a television sets, globes as well as a boiling ring.

Interestingly, this is not the only project Useni is involved in. Currently, he is working on a radio transmitter which will be in use within Zaria Academy when completed.

Useni’s best subject is Introducing Technology and he intends to study Electrical/Electronics Engineering in the University or Polytechnic.

Useni, who hails from Bukure Local Government Area of Kano State, does not come from an affllient family. Infact, he is one of the 30 indigent students who are enjoying the scholarship that was introduced by the institution’s proprietor, Dr Haroun Adamu.

A sum of N500,000 is spent on each of the scholarship awardees per year which takes care of their tuition, transportation, feeding, books and uniform.

Similarly, fifteen year-old Hammed Ibrahim, an SS 1 student teamed up with Hassan Hubu, a 16 year-old SS2 student, to invent an automatic water purifying system.

Also, sixteen year-old Al-Amin Halliru, who hails from Katsina State invented the automatic time keeper which the school uses in announcing its various activities to students.

Al-Amin’s best subject is physics, and like Useni, he also wants to study Electrical/Electronics Engineering after his secondary school education. Solar system is also being used to teach geography and geophysics in the college.

The students also proved to be on top of Technical Drawing as a school subject given the drawings of building plans they did which are architectural master pieces.

These students are carrying out these feats because of the support and the conducive environment provided for them by the school. While all the components of the students’ projects are provided by the school, electronics workshop, technical drawing workshop, science and computer laboratories are well equipped, with modern facilities.

All these have contributed to the high academic standard for which the school is known.
According to the Principal of the school, Mr Ungbo Wuyahku, “six pioneer students of the Academy have graduated from Malaysian Universities and are currently pursuing their post-graduate studies in Britain and America.

Reports from other alumni show that they are doing very well in the various universities, both at home and abroad. The 2006/2007 set recorded a 92.5% pass in SSCE and performed excellently in UME. Academy students participated in NNPC and STAN - organised competitions and they were rated overall 3rd best nationwide.

The Academy has been made a centre to present candidates for Cambridge International Examination (CIE). In the same vein, JAMB has also included the Academy on the list of its examination centres.”

The attainment of these academic feats is however made possible by the strict enforcement of discipline among staff and students.

According to the headteacher’ the use of mobile phones by students are prohibited to enable them concentrate in classrooms, to prevent them from communicating with people outside the school premises and to prevent the use of handsets in perpetrating examination fraud, adding that no fewer than nine students were expelled from the school last year for illegal possession of handsets.

In spite of these giant strides, the Academy is also set to introduce the abacus mental arithmetic to its students, a method which helps in the development of the mental faculty of the child.

Mr. Emmanuel Udoh, the school’s mathematics teacher, just returned from Malaysia where he had gone to learn the technique of teaching Mental Arithmetic which in which is vogue among over 40 countries of the world.

He is to train other teachers on the use of the abacus calculation method which is to be test-run first at the Academy before inaugurating it at the national level.

Udoh speaks on what he experienced in Malaysia: “Mental arithmetic is a tool being used to develop the child as it develops his or her power of thinking, power of observation and power of memory.”

Mr. Wuyahku, who also visited Malaysia, says of the tremendous advantages of teaching the mental arithmetic in Nigeria: “It is a universal concept of arithmetic. It develops children memorization ability, exposes them to brain development, gives them photographic memory and it removes the phobia of learning arithmetic as a subject.”

Zaria Academy was established in 1998 as a boys’ secondary school. But, the construction of a girls’ section of the school is on-going and the first set of girls is to be admitted in September this year.

This move, according to Dr Adamu, was informed by the need to expand access to education of girls in the north.
Source:http://www.vanguardngr.com/content/view/31339/79/