The Chief Executive Officer of the Brookehouse School in Lekki, Lagos, Mrs Ifueko Thomas, has disclosed that raising children to be intellectually and morally sound is essential in today’s world.

Thomas made the disclosure at the 2nd graduation and prize giving day ceremony of the school. She explained that education without character was counterproductive, calling on teachers to imbibe the values they teach children.

“Today, in our society the level of corruption is high and people wonder; did this people go to school? But they did. Education without character is nothing. Someone comes out with first class in Medicine, for example, but the person is not honest, not diligent, not trustworthy. So, whatever education you have without character is useless.

Within few years of Brookehouse existence, she said: “We are already seeing the result of our training in our pupils. For example, One of our pupils went to write an examination at a school and the school authorities were amazed and had to send message to our school that the boy had done our school proud because he was well behaved.

“Besides, on academics, we have set a target of 90 percent and we have gotten 99 percent in terms of pass for our year six pupils. Last year we surpassed the target but this year we have even done better.

“Our pupils did the Cambridge Checkpoint examination with our curriculum and they passed. They prepared for it within a month; it was a late decision we had to make. “We decided to test our pupils if they could actually write the exam as most parents were clamouring for it, and eventually they did excellently.”

The CEO also plead with the government to ensure that public schools get the same quality that the private schools are getting by embarking on training and retraining of teachers.

“For example, we have a fantastic relationship with the Eti-Osa Local Government Area and we are working with them to train public school teachers. We also have the Child Right Movement where we talk about every child’s right to quality education.

“Child Right is already in place in Nigeria; there is a Child Right Act that Nigeria signed to – the right to health, welfare, education, the right to be treated fairly, and the right to be heard. We teach our pupils these rights but we don’t teach them to be rude; it is part of our curriculum.”