The Katsina State Governor, Dikko Umaru Radda, yesterday unveiled Radda Model Secondary School, a fully-funded smart boarding institution designed to deliver free, high-quality education to indigent but academically gifted children across the state.

The school was formally unveiled by the Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, at a ceremony attended by top government officials and stakeholders, including the Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Olatunji Alausa

Purpose-built to combine scale with quality, the school features two 500-capacity multipurpose conference halls, 42 classrooms with a maximum of 40 students each, and six specialised laboratories spanning agriculture, chemistry, biology, physics, and vocational studies. It has already enrolled 998 students.

The school, which is one of three of its type, features special digital facilities, including smart teaching aids and well-equipped laboratories for teaching and learning.

Speaking at the unveiling, Radda described the school as a deliberate policy response to longstanding inequality in access to quality education.

He said: “This is not an act of charity; it is a commitment to making excellence accessible to every child, regardless of background. We are creating a system that searches for ability wherever it exists and gives it the opportunity to flourish.”

Radda added that the school’s academic direction would prioritise emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence to position students to compete in a rapidly evolving global economy.

The project forms part of a broader education reform agenda pursued by the administration since 2023, under which more than 75 new schools have been constructed and hundreds rehabilitated across underserved communities.

According to the governor, the model school initiative represents the peak of those interventions, with plans to replicate similar institutions across Katsina’s three senatorial zones.

He charged the pioneer students to justify the investment through discipline and academic excellence, noting that they would serve as a benchmark for its impact.