With no official legal age of completing secondary education in Nigeria, children, who are 16 or younger, are finding their way into the university. However, while some educationists advocate for children to be older, others think otherwise. KOFOWOROLA BELO-OSAGIE and DAMOLA KOLA-DARE report.
Educationists and parents are divided over whether children should be up to 18 before completing secondary school.
With both parents having to work, children in urban centres tend to start school as early as two years and may end up in Primary One one or two years before they are six, the official start age for primary education.
By the time they complete their primary education (which may take five or six years) at nine or 10, and follow with six years of secondary education, they graduate at 15 or 16.
Questions have been raised about their readiness for tertiary education at that age.
Recently, Osun State Speaker, Timothy Owoeye, said that secondary schools in the state would no longer be allowed to graduate children younger than 18.
Some educators and parents disagreed with 18 as the exit age from secondary education, saying it was too late, while others were for it. Many of them expressed concerns that there was no regulation about the start age of schooling.
Though Nigerians like to copy many things foreign, school age is not one of them. While children start school aged two in Nigeria, in developed countries like Canada, United Kingdom and the United States, children do not begin school until they are four.
In the UK, children complete secondary aged 16 or17, while those in the U.S and Canada finish secondary school at 17, 18 or even 19. Between 21 and 24, they are through with university education.
Education Consultant Mrs. Dideolu Adekogbe is an advocate of children spending the right number of years in school as stipulated by the National Policy on Education.
Mrs. Adekogbe who runs the Bring Back Primary Six movement, which advocates that primary education should terminate in Primary Six instead of primary four or five as practised by many private schools, said 18 years is not too old for children to leave secondary school.
She said: “The government standard should be upheld. What do we have in the national policy of education?
“Age six for Primary One and 18 years to be in the university is not late or too late.
“Life requires acquiring basic skills and maturity to handle situations, and spending required years and relating with age group in school prepares one beyond academics. Let us stick with standard, if you bend the rules, you will have more 14- years-old in the university as we already have. ”
Former President, Association for Formidable Educational Development (AFED), Mrs. Ifejola Dada, agrees with the age being pegged at 18 to allow for maturity of students before university.
“As for me, secondary school pupils should graduate at 18. Until we do the right thing, we will continue to produce cowards and dependent children. When children are skipping classes up to secondary school, graduating to university at age 16, this child is subject to lots of dangers. Cultists bullying them will subject them to surrendering themselves to their group for protection before they know. There is nothing wrong we do that does not have repercussions. The class they skipped will still tell on them as time goes by. My opinion in summary is that what is worth doing is worth doing well. If we want these children to go to school, let it be wholistic not haphazardly. Let us stop teaching for employment but let’s teach them to empower them for better future,” said Mrs. Dada, who runs Alphaseas Education Consult.
Mr Tolulope Animashaun, Head of Tolulope Schools, Alapere, Lagos, is among educators who think pegging secondary school exit age at 18 would be leaving it too late.
For me, I believe 16 years should be the minimum age to finish secondary school in Nigeria if we go by our current educational system of 9-3-4.
A child enters Primary 1 at 5 or 6 and finishes Primary education at 10 or 11 years and moves to Junior Secondary School (JSS) and finishes by 13-14 and then to the Senior Secondary School (SS class), he/she finishes by 16-17.
“So, 18 years would be too late for many children, especially children that keep to the expected ages of the classes.”
Animashaun, who is also the Assistant Secretary, League of Muslim Schools Proprietors (LEAMSP), Lagos State Chapter, urged the government to enforce Primary Six as the terminal class for primary education.
“What the government should do is to make sure children go through all the classes, including Primary Six that some parents want their children to skip,” he said.
Animashaun also advocated that secondary schools leavers spend a year gaining vocational skills.
He said: “I would also advocate that before a child gains admission into the Higher institution, he/she should go for a mandatory one-year vocational skills training and the certificate be presented as admission requirements in our higher institutions.
‘’ This would encourage more people to acquire vocational skils and would reduce unemployment in the country.
“With this, more standard vocational skills centre would spring up and govt could start regulating their activities.”
Proprietor of Laureates College, Mafoluku, Dr Olatokunbo Somolu, said children that are rushed do not usually perform so well.
” Truth is when they leave so early because they are rushed, they falter; they make mistakes. It is wrong to come to secondary school at nine. They don’t do well in secondary school. We have a rare case of some doing well, but most do not,” she said.
At tertiary level, according to the brochure of the the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), students are expected to clock 16 before being admitted into the tertiary institution.
A lecturer in the Department of Education (Counseling Psychology), Dr Tolani Williams, said the government should have an agency that monitors enrolment in Nigeria vis-a-vis age – a role which JAMB can play.
“I think it is important that we have abody that will oversee the enrolment processes from an age appropriate level. Fortunately, JAMB is a regulating body for admission into universities. Paragraph Three of the JAMB brochure states that ‘a student must have attained the age of 16 years or would have done so on the first day of October in the year of his/her candidature,” she said.
However, another lecturer, Dr Mahfouz Adedimeji, said the JAMB rule on age was not binding as some universities do not follow it.
He bemoaned how the ‘elite’ contravene laid down rules and get their children into private universities at age 14 or 15.
Adedimeji said: “There is an extant regulation or convention on the minimum age of 16 years for university admission that is being violated by some institutions.
“I say it is a regulation/convention because I am not aware it has any legal backing. Yet, many universities uphold the regulation, which is excellent. Various types of maturity are required to cope with the dynamics of tertiary education and the biological and the physical are part of them.
“The elite who violate rules and regulations with impunity often take recourse to private universities to get their children admitted at age 15 or 14. The Speaker’s intervention should be directed at ensuring that pupils complete their secondary education at 16, the age they are qualified for university education.”
Adedimeji also said there should be room for gifted children who are intellectually ahead of their age.
“Every general rule has an exception. There may be a genius, a child prodigy or an exceptionally gifted child who should be so acknowledged. Such a child can even become a graduate at 15 and professor 21. That may happen once in a blue moon and the case should be treated specially”,he said.
A school administrator, Adesola Adediran gave her full backing to the directive. She stated that it will help build a society with mature, competent and emotionally stable graduates.
She explained that age was a crucial factor in learning. She noted that it would ensure bringing back primary six which had been scrapped from private schools.
She said: ‘’It will help the society at large because there will be more mature and emotionally balanced working class citizens . People that can work with little or no supervision. Age also helps in learning, that is learning pace increases as we grow, this is visible in primary school pupils.
‘’Then for private primary schools, that means we bring back Primary Six compulsorily.”
Another respondent, a parent who did not want her name mentioned also supported the idea saying it was a “good” move. She, however, hoped that the policy would be implemented nationwide without further delay.
On his part, Mr Charles Ijimileyin, an educationist, applauded the policy. He said that the British system of education Nigeria claims to follow seems puzzling. He warned that the country would be churning out immature graduates if the system was not reviewed.
He said: “Generally, age is a decisive factor in the education of a child.During our time,we were asked to touch our ears; if your hand could not reach your ears,then you won’t be allowed in school.It was the standard practice in those days.You won’t be allowed into school if you weren’t six or seven years old.And by 18, you would have matured fully before gaining admission into the university.”
Another parent, simply called Mr Alhassan, said that there should not be any restrictions as regards age in education.He said that young and brilliant children who got into school early are at an advantage of finishing school earlier than those who are not so gifted academically and who either enrolled in school early or late.