) A don, Prof. Adebayo Oladipo, has called for the establishment of dedicated school-family communication structures for dependants of military officers.
The don made the call while delivering a lecture at a National Military Fathers’ Leadership and Family Well-Being Summit, organised by 2.0 SHE Safety and Health Initiative, an NGO, on Thursday in Lagos.
Oladipo, the Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Lagos, said dedicated school-family communication structures could form a channel between the child’s school, the non-deployed parent, and, where permitted by communication, the father himself.
“Given the evidence that communication quality buffers some of the negative effects of separation, schools serving barracks communities could adopt structured reporting to deployed fathers, whether through periodic letters, recorded messages or scheduled calls.
“This will make the father’s protective role to continue in modified form even at a distance.
“Secondly, counselling and mentorship support systems should be built into military schools and barracks communities as a standing service rather than an occasional intervention.
“This is with particular attention to boys entering adolescence during a father’s posting, given the documented risks around discipline and peer influence during this period.
“Thirdly, at the institutional level, stricter adherence to existing rules governing the frequency, notice and duration of postings would help restore a measure of predictability to family life.
“It will also allow spouses and schools to plan around a father’s absence rather than being repeatedly destabilised by it,” he said.
All these, he said , were pointing toward the implications that must be deliberately worked out at the level of policy and at the level of everyday practice.
“At the level of policy, the first implication follows directly from the recommendation on predictable postings.
“Deployment decisions cannot continue to be treated as a purely operational matter; they must be treated as a family matter as well.
“This means codifying minimum notice periods before relocation or deployment, and giving serious weight to the dose-related relationship examined earlier.
“The more cumulative months a father spends away, the greater the risk to his child’s attachment, mood and academic performance,” he said.
The don further stated that the second policy implication concerned education specifically and called for a formal continuity protocol for military dependents.
This, he said, involved standardised transfer of academic records, priority placement in the receiving school and structured catch-up support.(NAN)
