The sorry state of education in insurgency-ravaged area was brought to the fore in Malam-Fatori, Abadam Local Government Area of Borno State, when Governor Babagana Zulum discovered that majority of the pupils of a junior secondary school could not read. Assistant Editor, BOLA OLAJUWON, in this special report, calls for special attention for such areas to tackle out-of-school figure and learning crisis
When the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) came up with the latest figure of about 20 million out-of-school children in Nigeria, the Federal Government, through the Federal Ministry of Education, said the global data was not in tune with the reality on ground and did not take cognisance of actions taken on the matter.
The UNESCO, which said a new methodology was used to arrive at the latest figures, said there were “244 million children and youths between six and 18 worldwide (who) are still out of school”.
According to the statistics, India, Nigeria and Pakistan have the highest figures for out-of-school children globally. The figures in Nigeria had fluctuated between 10.5 million and 15 million for more than a decade. The situation grew worse due to the degenerating security situation in the country.
The global organisation said the team developing the report “has the official mandate of monitoring progress in meeting the Sustainable Development Goal on Education, SDG 4”.
According to the Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Silvia Montoya, efficient use of the available data is important to address the gaps towards achieving the fourth goal of the SDGs.
Another major data that should give the nation’s education policy-makers concerns was the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) claim that no fewer than 70 per cent of Nigerian children are suffering from learning poverty. The World Bank defined learning poverty as the inability of a 10-year-old to read or understand a simple sentence or solve basic numeracy problem.
UNICEF, in its learning poverty report, claimed: “research has shown that schooling does not always result in learning. Many children, even if in school, are not learning fundamental skills required for proficiency. As a result, many children are experiencing learning poverty, with an estimated 70 per cent of children falling under this category, varying from state to state.
“Even before COVID-19, the world was grappling with a learning crisis with half of all 10-year-olds in middle and low-income countries unable to read or comprehend a simple story. In sub-Saharan Africa, this is nearly nine in every 10 children.”
Malam-Fatori council, Borno State discovery
When Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum discovered that the majority of the pupils of a junior secondary school in Malam-Fatori, Abadam Local Government Area could not read, it brought to the fore the consequences of out-of-school children and learning poverty in Nigeria.
Zulum, who was at Malam-Fatori, the headquarters of Abadam Local Government Area, on the shores of Lake Chad in the northern part of the state, paid a surprise visit to the town’s Central Primary School and carried out an aptitude test on about 100 pupils at the Junior Secondary School section of the school.
At the end of the test, the governor found that 95 per cent of the pupils admitted could not read. Only seven of the pupils said they could read. He, then, asked each of them to read from a textbook and to pronounce the phrase: “Social Studies”. Five of the seven students pronounced it correctly while two failed.
The governor expressed worry about the quality of teaching at the school. This was after he found out that of the 224 teachers on the payroll of schools in the council, only six were present during his visit. Despite that, none of them possessed the requisite teaching qualification.
Zulum’s findings confirmed a report presented to him in February, this year, which assessed quality of primary school teachers across the 27 local government areas of Borno State.
The report had categorised Abadam as having the worst indices because out of 224 teachers assessed, only 14 were certified fit to teach in primary schools, and none of them was at the school during the governor’s visit.
The report said 70 of 224 teachers across Abadam LGA were found trainable while 140 were not and, therefore, unqualified to teach.
At the end of his findings, Zulum directed that measures should be taken to address the situation, which included the deployment of qualified teachers and the retraining of 70 teachers found to be trainable across the council.
He promised the government’s support to encourage the 70 teachers to return to colleges to acquire required knowledge and teaching skills.
Zulum, pending the full implementation of reform measures at Malam-Fatori Central Primary School and similar schools across Abadam, directed the immediate relocation of 362 primary pupils within teenage age brackets.
The decision, reached with the support of parents and guardians, was to move teenagers who are less dependent on their parents and could live in Maiduguri for boarding schools away from their parents.
The governor said moving some of the pupils was aimed at mitigating the impact of the poor learning environment, pending firm measures.
The discovery by Zulum at primary school and similar schools across Abadam was an icing on the cake on hiding malaise in the nation’s primary school education level, especially in areas and locations that the military had liberated from insurgents.
The import of the discovery
Mallam Fatori area had been under heavy attack by Boko Haram terrorists for many years. It is one of the two councils without human activities, which Zulum had insisted on returning displaced persons. Mobile police personnel had been deployed to clear the town in preparation for the return of refugees from Niger Republic. This is besides the army base stationed in the deserted town and other security agents like the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps and Department of State Services and the civilian JTF that were posted there to help in securing the town for the safe return of the refugees.
One wondered how the JSS pupils in the Malam Fatori area were admitted and the quality of entrance examinations conducted to allocate them in classes in schools. The discovery has made it a necessity for the Federal and state governments to carry out studies in former insurgent-ravaged areas to tame spiralling out-of-school children figure and learning crisis first, if the situation cannot be tackle nationwide.
UNICEF warning
When the precursor of the latest report on out-of-school figure was released, UNICEF had warned that education crisis in Nigeria was affecting children across the country. It emphasised that some children were more likely to be affected than others: girls, children with disabilities, children from the poorest households, in street situations, or affected by displacement or emergencies, and children in geographically-distant areas are all disproportionately affected by the education crisis.
“Millions of Nigerian children have never set foot in a classroom – and this is a travesty. Perhaps equally tragic is the high number of children who make it into a classroom, but never make the transition from primary school to secondary school – thereby cutting off their chances for a secure future.
“It is estimated that 35 per cent of Nigerian children who attend primary school do not go on to attend secondary school. Half of all Nigerian children did not attend secondary school in 2021. We need to look towards communities – leaders, parents, teachers and caregivers – and together, find the best strategies to ensure that all children enroll into school, have access to continuous learning and ensure they emerge with quality skills that equip them for a prosperous future.
“We also need to ensure that children are safe when they are in school – no child should be afraid to enter a classroom – afraid their school might be attacked or that they will be kidnapped. And no parent should fear sending their children to school,” said UNICEF Head Peter Hawkins.
Last year, the global body said there were 25 attacks on schools, 1,440 children were abducted, and 16 children killed.
In March, last year, no fewer than 618 schools were closed in six northern states (Sokoto, Zamfara, Kano, Katsina, Niger, and Yobe) over the fear of attack and abduction of pupils and staff. The closure of schools in these states significantly contributed to learning losses for over two months.
Utomi on priority for primary education
A Professor of Political Economy and management expert, Patrick Utomi, recently said what Nigeria needed to do right was to carry out reforms that would give priority to primary education over other levels of education, especially the university level.
He said this was necessary because primary education is the foundation that any learner would build on. According to him, it is at the primary education level that most people learn and form the basis of what they grow up with in life and the future, including good reading habits.
“And that is why as a country, we need to focus more on the primary education than tertiary education. If we do that, we will get quality products that will transit to both the secondary and tertiary levels.”
However, the situation in the country now is what we can describe as ‘garbage in, garbage out,’’ Utomi asserted.
School owner react
Reacting over the issue, the National President, National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS) Chief Yomi Otubela, said: “Learning is important to us in this part of this country and what we want to achieve first is to ensure that all our children have access to education; that doesn’t mean we are going to jettison quality of education, as the two go side by side. We can only correct those shortfalls in areas where children had had very poor outcome and to correct this, we need to do an audit of the teachers in those areas; the depth of teachers in education could have been affected; even in the urban areas. There is an exodus of teachers from schools that are looking for other jobs to do because COVID 19 has opened their eyes to the alarming nature of the consequence of teaching job when many schools could not afford to maintain the teachers’ take-home during the lockdown. Since then, teachers have had a rethink about the profession and have been moving out in droves. So moving out, this could affect the quality of the teaching process in those areas that have been affected by insurgency and it will take a deliberate effort to ensure that those teachers are first and foremost transformed and audited to ensure we can also improve on welfare of teachers so much. We can attract those who are not in teaching now to teaching and that will definitely affect the outcome of the learning process in the children.
For those children who could not pronounce words appropriately, it calls for reflection. To me, we should not leave this to government alone in as much we all agree that government has a lot to do to ensure that we get quality teachers and quality infrastructure to get children back to school in those affected areas.
We also need to quickly engage private sector so much more that government could partner them in some long term loan and also partner with them in adopting some of these schools, where they can assist government to get quality staff to run these schools so that is the way forward where we find such alarming and pathetic reports.
On how can government ensure quality in education in schools situated in troubled and affected areas, Otubela said: “In regulating education, there is a department called quality assurance department saddled with the primary responsibility of ensuring that the process of teaching and learning are in compliance with the policies. So, we need to check with the quality assurance department of that state which supposed to have done the audit that I mentioned earlier in auditing those schools that have been affected by insurgency and banditry attacks to ensure those children are not only back to school. There is what we call benchmark assessment; this is to assess what children know, their previous knowledge and what they are bringing back, so it will not be enough to just begin to promote the children to the next class if they have lost so much because of insurgency and others. We may need to have them stay back and retake some classes to make up for lost grounds so we don’t just produce students who can hardly spell their names in the name of just graduating children. So, the quality assurance department must live up to their responsibility and government must ensure that there are thorough supervisions for those officials in that department to carry out their job.”
Implementation of teachers’ policy
Also, despite their roles in nation-building, there are little incentives for teachers to hold on to as reward for their good works, especially those in insurgent-ravaged areas.
On the occasion to mark the World Teacher’s Day two years ago, the President approved a special package for teachers and those aspiring to join the profession. But two years down the line, those “special packages” remain in the pipeline.
Only Zamafara, Osun, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and some teachers in Adamawa have started benefiting from the new law.
However, Minister of Education Adamu Adamu said the national implementation of the New National Teaching Policy has commenced.
The minister, who said this during a news conference ahead of this year’s WTD, appealed to states on the need to implement the new national teachers’ policy aimed at boosting the teaching profession.
Adamu said the Federal Government had hit the ground running on implementation of the improved welfare package for teachers and urged states to do same.
While this is being implemented nationwide, the situations in insurgent-ravaged areas are critical. Schools and pupils in the communities need special attention.
Nigeria Learning Passport and other solutions
To tackle the learning poverty crisis, Nigerian Learning Passport is being launched in states across the country.
Usamatu Mohammad Gona, the Katsina State Coordinator of the programme during the launch in Katsina, said: “The Nigeria Learning Passport is an electronic distance learning medium fortified with audio-visual materials and books to aid self-based learning has been launched in Katsina State to help fast-track learning among pupils and students of primary and junior secondary schools across the state.”
The Learning Passport is delivered by UNICEF and the Federal Ministry of Education and powered by Microsoft, with funding support from Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and is free for learners.
UNICEF said Nigeria’s education system can be transformed through adequate funding to ensure schools are safe; the application of gender-responsive policies, including recruitment of female teachers and improved facilities for girls; the creation of multiple and flexible learning pathways for students, such as digital and transferable skills learning; the integration of foundational numeracy and literacy in Qur’anic schools; and teacher training in the latest methodologies.
“All Nigerian children deserve a fighting chance – no matter who they are or where they are. And this must include an education. It is not only their right – it is the smartest and best way to secure the future of Nigeria as a whole,” said Hawkins.
