The Ondo state government has returned St Louis Secondary School Ondo town and Aquinas College Akure to the Catholic Church,Ondo diocese.
This follows agitations from the church that some missionary schools be returned to the Catholic Church.
A source who preferred anonimity disclosedon Thursday that arrangement had been concluded and the Catholic Church would fully take over the two schools starting from the new academic session.
According to the source, all the teaching staff in the affected schools would be redeployed to other public schools in the state.
He said: “A committee was set up and it had been discussing with the governor in the past two or three years on the need to hand over those schools to the Catholic Church.
“I can tell you categorically that the Ondo state government has given us St. Louis Secondary School, Ondo and Aquinas College Akure.
“We have finalised arrangement on how to run the schools from September ,the new academic session.
“The year one students that will be coming to Aquinas College will be admitted and conducted by the Catholic Church and the teachers that will be teaching them will be those employed by the Catholic Church.
“St Louis Ondo and Aquinas College were the two schools we requested and demanded from the state government up tiil our last meeting with the government.
“On what will be the likely tuition, he said : “ The issue is ,you don’t expect government to keep paying teachers and Catholic Church will be running the school.
“You don’t also expect the tuition fee to remain#5,000 per session.
“In as much as we want the Catholic schools that we all attended in those days, there must be some changes and it will be balanced.
“It won’t be that expensive because the schools will be run as day and boarding, so those who are willing to put their children in boarding schools will be ready to pay money because feeding them is not easy.
“For those on day schools, their tuition will be far below what others will pay.”
ROVING