By Faith Igbudu
As Nigeria gradually move towards transiting to a new administration, the education sector assumes one key area government at all levels need to pay attention to in order to achieve desired standards.
Education is said to be at the heart of any development in a society, hence its importance. Other sectors rest on it to thrive. From the health sector to finance and agriculture or oil exploration, none of these sectors can experience any advancement without education.
It is against this backdrop that nations craving for development place education at the front burner of governmental affairs.
This cannot be said about Nigeria as education here has experienced gradual decline from the standards at the start of education in country.
In the past years, education has been treated as one of those side attractions why heavy attention has been paid to matters of health and security which has yielded no fruits.
The failure of the government to prioritise education in a densely populated nation like Nigeria is the major reason why other sectors of the economy may not work.
The country at its early age valued education. This could be understood through the efforts made to ensure that persons who were educate got attractive rewards. Citizens were sponsored overseas to acquire education and at the very basic, standard schools were made free with quality books and teachers.
The country blossomed but all of a sudden the level of greed among leaders widened and corrupt practices slowly widened the gap between proper education and Nigerian citizens.
Indeed, things have changed beginning from the public primary schools to public tertiary institutions. Today, private schools, both standard and sub-standard, are proliferating and this has worsened the quality of education.
Enrolling a child in public schools is now treated with disdain. In some cases, the pupils or students feel inferior to their counterparts in private schools. The fact that parents are now afraid to send their children to the public primary schools where they themselves attended early in their lives shows the level of ignominy.
In ideal worlds, basic education at its best will be publicly financed, and all children would be able to attend school regardless of their parents’ ability or willingness to pay. This is because when a child fails to acquire the basic skills needed to function as a productive, responsible member of society, not only the child but society too suffers.
Adults who lack basic skills have greater difficulty finding well-paying jobs and escaping poverty which gives room for high insecurity concerns, uninformed display of anger during conflicts, destroying government’s infrastructure development efforts, along side alot of negative, harmful activities.
Although most state governments have declared education free as part of their political moves, the act has not being profitable as the structure to drive its successful implementation is not in place.
Nigeria’s underdevelopment has often been linked to lack of investment in human development and problems associated with educational reforms. Like many developing economies, Nigeria faces ominous educational challenges and there is no will within the political class to address them.
For any meaningful change to happen in the education sector, there are four areas that government must pay attention to. They include; Infrastructure, Curriculum, Teachers welfare and Technology enhancement.
The infrastructural decay in the educational sector seem to be alarming.
School infrastructure is what influences student learning so that it can run optimally. According to a study in the UK, colleges and other schools increase students’ academic success by 16% after improving design and environmental elements.
Overcrowded classrooms also have a negative impact on teachers. Knowing that they cannot reach students at optimal level, many teaching professionals just aim for average impact, hoping that most of their students will succeed with what manages to get through.
With dilapidated infrastructure a regular sight in most public schools, well-meaning parents had no option than to migrate to private schools with their children and wards.
There is the issue of curriculum review. For sometime now, experts and various stakeholders in the education sector have been calling for a review of Nigerian curriculum in order to soothe modern day requirements of education.
Nigerian education regulators ensure that institutions comply and teach outdated curriculum contents, thereby suppressing the cognitive growth of the nation’s future leaders who are required to think outside the boxes. Emphases are centred more on the acquisition of abstract terms and not on the significant impacts of the content on students’ ability to apply the terms in problematic situations.
The question remains how to develop an educational curriculum that will pragmatically identify how to improve the Nigerian student in the Nigerian society and prepare them for the organisations of tomorrow.
The out-dated curriculum has made it difficult for these graduates to be employable. Unfortunately, these graduates feel otherwise as they see themselves as fit for the highest positions in the society.
On issue of teachers welfare, it is a pity that the teachers that are the real driving engines towards achieving all the lofty goals in the sector are the most ill-treated, most neglected and most looked down upon. Bcause of such poor disposition towards teachers, it is simply impossible to get the best from them and by extension, the zeal to achieve excellence remains a pipedream.
Nothing will change until all tiers of government realize the importance of putting teachers in the right pedestal as important stakeholders in the quest for excellence in the education sector.
In a paper presentation by Enimu Solomon Ph.D on the Improved Welfare of Teachers: An Imperative for National Development at the 6™ Quadreniel (7™) State Delegate Conference of Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) Delta State, he said, “The condition and welfare of the Nigerian teacher is a pitiable one. They operate from not too friendly work environment with meager and irregular salaries. Irregular salaries reduce teacher’s passion for the profession and are not properly trained on what it takes to be a 21″ century teacher and when they are trained, lack the necessary instructional materials to carry out their jobs and yet they are the first to be blamed for poor students’ achievement.
According to him, Nigerian teachers, particularly those in the public school system, continue to nose-dive into poverty saying the plight of Nigeria’s teacher is pitiful as many of them have died of hunger, diseases and out of frustration. The system has turned a good number of them into beggars and destitute such that the younger generation dreads the idea of becoming teachers in the future.
‘If our teachers are not appreciated and recognized, they would be forced to turn their noble job of inspiring the youth to higher academic excellence into positions of creating ‘Yahoo boys’ and ‘runs girls’ in our schools” he said.
On remuneration for teachers to put them at par with their counterparts in other sectors, the Director-General, National Teachers’ Institute (NTI), Dr. Aminu Ladan, recently pointed out that Nigeria teachers are de-motivated in Nigeria because their remuneration is abysmally low.
He further asserted that in the past teachers were motivated and had no option than to perform. But today, teachers’ pay is so low that most of them can barely put food on their tables by the time they settled their children school fees, utility and medical bills, yet they are expected to perform magic. It is quite absurd that under this unpalatable condition, they are expected to produce those that will grow up to become leaders of tomorrow.
He explained that they are expected to perform wonders in bare classroom as they are derogatorily compared with teachers in other countries or teachers of the past. Was this the situation of Nigerian teachers in the past? Let me take you down memory lane, we all remember how teachers were revered, in villages, teachers are next to the village heads or chiefs.
Coupled with poor remuneration is the issue of overloading of work schedule, a situation in which a teacher is made to teach more than one subject in classes with arms ranging A – G and with over populated students/classroom ratio.
It is a known fact that due to poor work environment, teachers incessantly go on industrial actions, which has become the only means of getting government to react to their needs and frustrations. During such periods, learners stay at home, roam the streets hawking and imbibing criminal behaviour. Because of deives in salaries, many schools teachers get involved in trading even inside their dassroom and staff room. When such salaries are eventually paid they continue with their trading because they dont know when the next salary would be paid.
The resultant effect is that the school teachers hardly teach. They do not prepare their lessons and they do not care whether pupils learn or not. To cover up their lapses, they get all the pupils to pass at the end of the school year. Such pupils cannot write nor show any evidence of leaming. Many of the pupils fail their national common entrance examinations and are of very low discipline and morals.
A commendable action towards the improvement of teachers welfare is the decision taken by the Buhari led administration but more needs to be done in this area.
Recall that on October 5, 2020, during the commemoration of World Teachers Day, President Buhari, represented by the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, unveiled the president’s new welfare packages to the teachers. A “special pension scheme to enable the teaching profession to retain its experience and talents as well as extend teachers’ retirement age to 65 years and the duration of teaching years to 40 years.”
The president also approved the building of low-cost houses for teachers in rural areas and the sponsorship of teachers just as sponsorship of teachers just as he assured of prompt payment of salaries and timely promotion to eliminate stagnation. This is in addition to the Teachers Conversion Programme and ICT training to mitigate the current dearth of qualified teachers in the school system.
The other important issue to address is the need for schools at all levels to go digital. Technology is evolving fast, and as a result, schools need to upgrade their technology infrastructure to keep up.
Recently, the African Centre of Excellence on Technology Enhanced Learning (ACETEL) Coordinator, Joshua Atah, said the experience of COVID-19 took the world by surprise and also taught the world a lesson.
He said “The experience means we can no longer run away from technology. The way do things in education has changed and that change has come to stay.
“Before now, we started having issues with very large classes as the population was growing. The number of people that need to access education was increasing every day. So, the problem of access can actually be addressed by using technology.
“Technology has come to bridge that gap, so we must continue to engage in new tools, technology and new methods of enhancing access to education,” Atah suggested.
These concerns have wrapped up appeals made by VCs who urge Tinubu to prioritise funding, research and scholarship in varsities and Nigerian students who have appealed to the incoming administration of Bola Tinubu to address the problem of unemployment by making jobs available for graduates.
