The surging number of out-of-school children Osun State as the highest in the Southwest is raising concerns, TOBA ADEDEJI reports.
Brother! Come and buy my mint candy! I sell cheaply. Please buy from me even if it is one or two. My brother over there is also selling bitter kola. You can buy from him too,” an eight-year-old boy, who is a candy hawker at the popular Ola-Iya Bridge, pleaded with this reporter.
When asked why he was not in school by the early hour of the day? He replied: “We go to school once in a while. We are also sent here once in a while to come and make money. Out of our profit, our parents use it for our school fees. We are attending private school. Our parents decided to withdraw us from public school because our performance is becoming poor.”
Checks by The Nation indicated that most public places in Osun State have been flooded with children during school hours. These children are either begging or hawking. Others are left for the street urchins to determine their fate.
Among the places visited in Osogbo, the state capital, during school hours are Ola-Iya, Alekuwodo, Shasha market, Osun Mall, Oke-Fia, Old Garage, Igbona, Aregbe, Oja-Oba, Olu-Ode, Owode-Ede, Ilesa garage among others.
Other public places in the state’s major towns are not left out, including Ikirun, Ede, Ilesa, Iragbiji, Aagba, and Okuku.
Despite that every child has the right to education as enshrined in the Child Rights Act of 2003, this seems to be a mirage in Osun State because the statistics of out-of-school children have ever increased.
A Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MIC-6) released in 2021 rated Osun as the state with highest number of out-of-school children in the Southwest. The MICS-6 is a National Bureau of Statistics data supported by the United Nations Children and Educational Fund (UNICEF). According to the UNICEF Social Policy Specialist, Muhammad Okorie, 14.88 per cent of male and 11.5 percent of female children in Osun were out-of-school in the state.
How Aregbesola’s educational policy boomeranged
Osun State is one of the states with the highest number of classrooms after the intervention of the administration of Governor Rauf Aregbesola, who tackled infrastructural shortfall in the education sector.
The administration embarked on the construction of 11 mega schools, including the construction of other major and minor classrooms across the state. Omotunde Young, the Commissioner for Education under the Rauf Aregbesola administration, noted that the Osun State schools were run like zoos before the government came in and “the governor decided to change the undesirable condition previous government had left the sector”.
Subsequently, the administration introduced a new education policy which consisted of a single uniform for students, school renaming, reclassifications and merging, among others.
The school was reclassified to a 4-5-3-4 system as Aregbesola held that the system was introduced by Obafemi Awolowo and he promised that the system would bring to the fore, the importance of education to the society and ensure that no child of school age was excluded from getting quality western education.
The policy was reversed by the administration of Adegboyega Oyetola, who succeeded Aregbesola on the ground that the policy affected the quality of education negatively, a situation that caused partners and stakeholders, including United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), ex-students associations among others to withdraw from the state.
In 2022, after the policy was reversed, UNICEF, through its Social Policy Specialist, disclosed that Osun has the highest number of out-of-school children in the Southwest.
However, the number increased from the statistics of UNICEF of 2022 according to the report presented by the Education Summit committee inaugurated by Governor Ademola Adeleke, which was chaired by Prof. Oyesoji Aremu despite that the state has 1,340 primary schools – 647 in urban and 693 in rural areas – and 387 secondary schools.
Blame game
But, Oyetola has blamed the surge on Adeleke for playing politics with the education system, stressing that the governor sacked over 1,500 teachers he employed during his administration.
Oyetola maintained that the policy of reversal he initiated during his administration had started yielding good results because he followed the recommendations made by the review committee on education chaired by Prof. Olu Aina.
He said: “My admonition to the government is that it should not play politics with education. When we were in government, we employed about 1,500 teachers. But unfortunately, the present government stopped all of them when they came on board, and over a year now, they have not done anything to fill up the vacancies created. This has led to the recent increase in out-of-school children in Osun State. I want to implore the government to ensure they employ adequate teachers and also the ex-students of schools across the state should partner with the government.”
However, the Adeleke administration berated Oyetola over his allegation. The state government, through Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, Kolapo Alimi, attributed the huge number of out-of-school children to years of neglect of the education sector inherited from the Oyetola administration.
Alimi noted that the upcoming recruitment of 6,000 teachers is part of the administration’s three-pronged approach to redressing the situation.
According to him, “Osun suffered years of educational neglect and misplaced priority under the Oyetola government. It is on record that the last administration in a series of post-election bobby traps employed over 10,000 workers to make the state ungovernable for the incoming Adeleke government, a development the new government promptly addressed with six executive orders to restore normalcy.”
Despite the government’s defence, findings by The Nation shows that many schools, including schools of special needs, are short of teachers as some schools have 69 pupils against five teachers, 102 pupils to 12 teachers, 86 pupils to four teachers, 310 pupils to 25 teachers, 275 pupils to 15 teachers, among others.
Osun has 11,000 shortfall of teachers, says ex-Education Special Adviser
Speaking on the development, the former Special Adviser to Oyetola on Education, Jamiu Olawumi, chided Adeleke’s approach in handling the education sector, stating that the present government placed politics above quality education.
He explained: “During the administration of Oyetola, we ensured we took education to the doorstep of the people. We organised town hall meetings in nine Federal Constituencies to know their grievances against the policy we inherited. The policies that Aregbesola’s government introduced chased partners away from the state. Imagine, the school merger decision forced male students to attend only girls’ school, and the male will carry a certificate that he attended Baptist Girls College. UNICEF blacklisted us and the state suffered greatly. We were enlisted again after the reversal.
“Subsequently, we introduced scholarship programmes for indigent pupils, which is a platform we created to bring children into our school. We paid for the WASCE and NECO exams.
“In the report of the Education Review Committee chaired by Prof. Olu Aina, it was discovered that we have a 6,000 shortage of teachers in our schools and we commenced a recruitment exercise. We employed 2,500. But, Adeleke came on board to sack 1,500 politically. Every month teachers retire from service and others leave their jobs every day for several reasons.
“By projection, Osun has an 11,000 teacher shortfall in schools, which is one of the factors that is contributing to the number of out-of-school children in the state. Instead of the government addressing the matter, their education summit only addresses how they will renovate classrooms. They do not think about the teachers that will teach them.
“The present government is only interested in how they will make money through contracts of refurbishing the school. They are not tackling the challenges holistically. They renovated 31 schools out of about 380 schools in bad condition. They are looking for soft matter to address in the sector.”
He added: “On school feeding, the money budgeted per student is till N100 per pupil and each of them has to eat an egg per day. The cost of an egg per one in the current economic reality is N120. Despite the fact that education is free in Osun, the current government’s action is discouraging students from going to school.”
Osun govt: we are making education encouraging to children
The Commissioner for Education, Dipo Eluwole, boasted that the government’s rate of awareness to woo children to school was superb.
He lamented that “in the past, the previous administration neglected the national policy on education; they formulated their policies and did their own. They said they were running an unusual government, and Aregbesola said so. They dumped the 6-3-3-4 policy and adopted their style. We also have the issue of Mega School that is giving us problems now.”
“Why is Osun home to out-of-school children? It is because Osun is a civil servant state. We are into farming, and the low-income earners in Osun are many. Many students in Osun before they go to school have to hawk before they can get a stipend to feed in school. They do that for one hour before they go to school. It is easier for them because the school is close to them. But when they started their mega school nonsense, whereby schools are very far from them, this made many students opt out.”
He added: “Tackling the problem from the previous government is a big challenge because most schools have been abandoned. We are renovating the schools in catchment areas so that students can attend schools close to them. We are improving on school feeding which made the students stop hawking before they go to school. The school population is now increasing.”
Eluwole noted that the government is tackling truancy in schools and also commissioned special marshals to arrest children and parents who are found on the street during school hours, saying, “We are tackling the menace of truancy, absenteeism and insecurity in schools now; it is not business as usual”
The surge in out-of-school children is pathetic
A Child rights advo cate, Dr. Chuks Okoji, who is also a lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication, Federal Polytechnic Offa, Kwara State, described the surge in out-of-school children as pathetic.
He said: “The first blame has to be on the parents who refused to enroll and ensure their children go to school. It is unfortunate that in this age, some parents are lackadaisical about the acquisition of universal basic education that is available for free at least at the primary school level.
“I have heard people point to poverty as the main reason for pupils dropping out of school. But, the question is what the reason is for pupils dropping out of Government Primary school, which is free? The problem is most parents give birth to children they can’t cater for. I am not saying there is no poverty in the land, but if proper family planning is in place, ensuring that a child has access to basic education wouldn’t be a problem for serious parents.”
Okoji lamented that irresponsible parents will hinge the blame on the government and the economy, which are not the main cause of the surge in out-of-school children.
According to him, the government is also culpable in contributing to the surge.
“Visit most Primary and Secondary schools and you will pity the learning condition of the students. Most students sit on the floor under dilapidated buildings. The maintenance of these school structures, especially in the remote areas is zero. It will be hard to convince students to go to school under this harsh condition and the government has a role to play in making the learning environment conducive. “In furtherance to this, the welfare of the teachers in primary and secondary schools in Nigeria is not encouraging. Gone are the days when teachers will look out for the child not seen in school. The teacher who is sad about the pay of his work will not go the extra-mile to encourage the attendance of pupils in school.
“The economy has played a damning role in the surge of out-of-school pupils. Most parents can’t afford to give meals to their wards and as such, the child is pushed to the street to fend for himself. It is not surprising to see children who are within primary school age hawking beverages and bottled water on the street and inside traffics in major towns of the country. The ones in the villages resort to menial jobs to have money to survive,” Okoji said.
