Professor Adewale Solarin is the Director and Chief Executive of the National Mathematical Centre (NMC), Abuja. He is a fellow of the Mathematical Association of Nigeria (FMAN) and President of African Mathematical Union (AMU). The Professor of Mathematics took up the mantle of leadership of the centre on March 31, 2013. Before his appointment, he was the Coordinator of the Mathematics Programme of the centre. Solarin spoke with GBENGA OMOKHUNU and GRACE OBIKE on the challenges hindering his job and how students can overcome the phobia for Mathematics, among other issues. Excerpts:
What challenges have you been facing since you took over the mantle of leadership of NMC?
Well, the main challenge, which still remains as it is with most Ministries Department and Agencies (MDA’s), is finance; we have a lot of programmes that we will like to implement but we have limited funds. As you know that our mandate is to encourage the teaching and learning of Mathematics in Nigeria at all levels and from Mathematics, we are talking of Computer Science, mathematics education, statistics etc. So, the challenge has been that there is the phobia for Mathematics and we have done researches into the causes of the phobia and the need to come up with solutions to the problem.
Some of the solutions to the problem include the use of mathematics teaching aids and what we call maths teaching kit, and this maths teaching kit, while it can be really affordable. For public schools, when you look at the number of schools for the government, it becomes like an enormous cost. So, that is the challenge, getting the appropriate funds to disseminate knowledge of this methodology to the schools.
Have you discussed those challenges with the minister?
The NMC can be said to be a parastatal of the ministry. I know the level of funds at that level because we are getting from the same source. So, the ministry is constrained, more importantly. If you talk of Mathematics at the secondary and primary schools, it is the responsibility of the states; so we don’t have direct control of any serious influence on that level of operation.
How far have you gone with stakeholders in impacting Mathematics on states?
We are checking the level of recourses that we have at the centre and how we can partner together. A few states have been making attempts like Osun and Taraba. We are discussing at different levels but things are still slow; the only advanced of them is Osun but I still don’t see the green light to show that they are going on with the implementation in the next academic session. So, this is always the problem.
What do you think should be done to ginger other states?
We will continue the advocacy from time to time. We have brought together the proprietors of private schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to do exactly with the them what we did with the chairmen in various states, because you know that the chairmen are responsible for primary and secondary schools in the public sector; this group now is responsible for private schools and you know that in Nigeria right now, we see that a good percentage of students are actually in private schools.
So, we are trying our best, like the meeting we had with the proprietors of private schools in the FCT, we are going to repeat it in every state for private schools in those states for them to see their own responsibility in this global picture and with them, we are likely to get a faster result because at that meeting, we agreed to form a committee of NMC staff and their members to lay the modalities for working together and that we intend to do in every state. At least we can immediately get results with Mathematics in the private schools. If the private schools are doing fine, it will also reflect and be a challenge to the public schools or at least we would be able to identify public schools where we have challenges and see how we can be able to make some changes there.
What do you think makes students have phobia for Mathematics?
The problem of Mathematics is still the same problem of quality of education but it is more pronounced with Mathematics and it cuts across virtually everything. The problem is teacher-based; if everything is okay with the teacher, then the phobia will be gone. When you talk about being teacher- based, it means the teacher must have the right knowledge; the material itself, the curriculum, what he is supposed to teach, he must know it himself, have the right attitude, right methodology, deliver that knowledge that he wants to impact, but they don’t have the knowledge or materials or resources to actually communicate that knowledge at the level that the students will be able to comprehend and then make use of.
If you talk of knowledge, you talk of wisdom, wisdom is applied knowledge but you must not acquire the knowledge before you begin to know of how to apply, so it is what you apply now that becomes wisdom. When they acquire the knowledge, they also need to acquire the methodology to communicate with the pupils. When that is right, then the students will not have the challenge and of course the first thing that we are hoping is that the teacher gets all the right motivation because there is still something that we are not getting right, and it keeps affecting the future of this country.
Let me tell you, I have been doing this statistics; watch your television station if you see those who are below the age of 30, when they communicate on the television, you realise that some of them cannot speak correct English. It is not their fault, it is the fault of the school system, if the teachers are not adequately prepared, use the right method to teach, the products will be what you are seeing now. So. what I also know is that teachers also need to be properly motivated in order to put in their best. The main challenge which I know is that we have the worst of us teaching our children, preparing our future; that is the problem.
Unlike in our own days, teaching was probably the most lucrative job and everyone wanted to be a teacher and the best pupils went to teachers training and they became teachers but now, it’s the worst students who go to teach and teaching is not just the content of curriculum, it is the totality and personality standing in front of the class. So, when the person tries to communicate with the pupils and he is feeling that well, I shouldn’t really be here but I don’t have another option. The communication will go from him to the students.
So. there must be a process to change that; the only way to change that is to now begin to create scholarships for those that want to be teachers, so that the best will become teachers and if the best is to become teachers, there must be proper remuneration to make teaching attractive. For instance, a person should be able to decide to go and teach instead of a medical or engineering job because the teacher is even more important than the doctor.
In Canada, it is easier to enter a medical school than go to a teachers college because the conditions are tougher and they want the best and the best get the best remuneration. If you retire as a teacher in Canada, you get more package than a doctor. So, the incentives should be there to get the best in the teaching profession.
Is it a fact that more girls have phobia for Mathematics than boys?
It is not a fact; just in a meeting, I was showing them that the top 100 West African Examination Council (WAEC) students in 2009, out of the top 100, 62 were girls and that 62% is not by chance. If it is 49% or 51%, then you can say that it is by chance but when you have 62, that is to say that the top 62% are girls, so if Maths was a problem, they won’t be amongst the top 100 and you can go on and find out that there is always the statistics to show that it is not a gender issue as long as Maths is concerned. The only thing is that when you graduate to higher levels of Mathematics, a lot of girls are not involved but that is a question of the motivation that is required because girls don’t have the fighting spirit. I see it because I organise a lot of competitions, so I know. It is not that they are weaker as long as the knowledge of Mathematics is concerned but they don’t have that fighting spirit, where the boys can go the extra mile for competition, not many girls can.
But if they get the proper encouragement definitely, the potential is there and the recognition is that we are trying to see how we can encourage them. I began a project which we call Pan-African Olympian for girls; the first edition is going to be hosted by Nigeria. The idea is to get the best to have competitions for girls; there is already an Olympian in which boys and girls compete, but we only want to do this one for girls so that girls can be encouraged and they can achieve great heights. The programme itself is titled, ‘More than a mathematician’. There will be full scholarship to study in the best university in the world for the top four representing any country; they will get scholarship to study Maths anywhere in the world, why we used ‘More than a mathematician’ is that we intend to prepare them for leadership positions and we are using Maths as a tool, the scholarship is going to be up to PhD level.
Are you worried about the yearly turnout of NECO and WAEC results? What role are you playing to salvage the situation?
As far as Mathematics is concerned, we know the problems and solutions and what is required is the environment in terms of resources to simulate this position. For instance, if we have the fund to bring all teachers that are currently in schools to the National Mathematical Centre (NMC) for one month, no matter how bad they are as teachers, they will be transformed and be greater teachers. We discovered that part of the problems in the secondary level is that there are many topics that teachers avoid and when they come for our trainings, we give them problems, they argue with us, at the end, they see where the fault lies because we use modules to explain to them clearly.
When a teacher is avoiding a topic, definitely, he does not teach it and that reduces the possibility of the child passing, because if one third of the curriculum is avoided, the student is constrained, so we have the technology to change that. The other problem is the availability of teachers, putting the existing ones right for them to be able to deliver, like we have this Maths kit which is distributed to all schools. It will aid teaching and learning of Mathematics.
Now, there is the unavoidability of teachers, you see a public school with a population of 6,000 with only 15 Maths teachers, that is like 500 students to a teacher. In one of the schools where I did my survey, I discovered that the Further Maths teacher comes into the class once in a month. What I did was to identify a girl in the school then; she was in SS1, a very brilliant girl, I interacted with her. She was by then offering Further Maths and I decided to tutor her and in the process discovered that the teacher only enters their class once in a month, and it was not his fault because in their school, one arm, like SS1, for instance is like 10 classes, so he goes from one class to the other and still has Elementary Maths to teach.
So, in the scheme of things, he cannot come to the class more than once in a month so he is busy and it is not as if he is not coming to school; and that was what I realised also with other subjects as well like Chemistry and Physics, the teacher writes on the board and each class goes there to copy the notes; that is all. So, for Maths, we did a survey and found out that the student-teacher ratio in the public schools is 1 to 350 and ideally, it should not be more than 50 but if you can do 1 to 100, it is still a lot of stress because, you introduce a concept, you teach and you give an exercise, every week you give exercise, the students will do it and submit and the teacher will grade. and as you are scoring, you will now discover the areas that they do not understand so that the next time you come to class, you discuss it and give further test.
There is no way a teacher can decide to do well if you are teaching Maths to a class of 1,000. And serious scoring for 1000 students, you cannot score more that 50 in a day no matter what. So, the best should have been 1 to 50 and the worst 1 to 100. What we do is that if we want to train teachers, we have a programme, what we call conversion programme for people who have qualification in other areas not Maths. As long as you have credit in Maths, we could retrain you in six months to teach Maths up to Junior Secondary School from Primary School.
Then, if you have a degree in science then we can train you within six months to teach up to SSS3 and WAEC levels. So, that is one of the things we can do in arresting the situation. If a state decides that they need 200 additional Maths teachers, we can train all those graduates that are unemployed. when a state government does its study and it needs additional teachers, if it contacts us and is ready to fund it, we will either send our team over there or it sends them to our centre.
Are you working with the Minister on this?
I am a staff of the ministry, there is going to be the National Teachers Summit and these are things that we are going to discuss. Already, all our papers are ready waiting for the absolute time. For teachers there is the need to have what we call school teachers’ trust fund, which is primary and secondary. In Canada, for instance, if you have a degree in education and you want to teach, you will still go for further training. We will propose the idea of the trust fund at the summit; that will take care of training, numeration and incentives for teachers at school level with more emphasis on primary to be able to attract the best people to teach at that level.
You were recently appointed as scientific board member of the International Basic Science Programme (IBSP) of UNESCO, how can you bring this development to bear in NMC?
I guess they saw my CV, because I have been teaching Maths at the university level for years. I have made many contributions; I have produced more than 10 PhDs who have gone ahead to be professors now and when you talk of masters and postgraduates, I have supervised more than 50 now. Fortunately, the idea of the basic science programme is to promote teaching, learning and research in basic science. You see, the development of basic science is very important in the development in any nation; yes, we can have technology and research at applied science level but basic science is still fundamental in terms of developing knowledge in science and technology.
That is why when you talk of developing stem, you talk of science, technology, engineering and Maths and if you are talking of basic science now, for us most of the activities of the National Mathematical Centre, most of them fall into the purview of IBPS of UNESCO because what we do here, teaching and learning of mathematical sciences, in terms of teaching, learning and research is also what they promote at the international level. So, I see that partnering and collaborating with NMC on virtually all our programmes, like this Pan African Olympian for girls, already they have bought into it. The other programme that we are requesting later in the year, that is Pan African Science Olympian, it is also within the purvey of the programme. So, they are also supporting it.
From different quarters, there are complaints that Nigerian universities are not among the top universities in the world, at least the top 100. What is your take on this?
Well, I’m worried and the reason is that it should not be. Interestingly enough, there are many factors involved; 60% of those who are in the university system today are not university materials; 60% of those who are called lecturers and professors in the university system today are not university materials and if you look at industrial process, that is why I always say we should not view education as a development programme any longer, lets change the view, let’s begin to view it like an industrial process, because in the industrial process, you know that if you set up an industry today, you care about the output, because you know that if the output is not right, then you are not in business.
If your output is not selleable, you are not in business. what do you do? You first make sure that your production process is right and then you make sure that you get the appropriate raw materials. If the raw material is not good, it will be garbage in, garbage out; so get the appropriate raw materials, and then your process is right and then your products will be good, it will be selleable. If our university products are not selleable, which is what we are having now, there is something wrong with the process or raw materials, but in this case, it is the two of them, both the process and the raw material, so we cant get selleable products.
When you look at the process, if you take lecturers that are within as part of the process, I am saying that 60% of them have no business being there; so, no matter what you try to do, they cannot compete with the best in the world. If they are the real university materials, even when you see that the facilities are not okay, they will use their ability to bring out something that will still be of world class. the survey I want people to do is to look at the university graduates, First Class and Second Class Upper from 1990, where will you find 60% of them? Not in the university system and those are the university materials. So, if 60% of our university graduates of First Class and 2.1 are outside the university system, then that means that 60% of those that are in the university system are not university materials and until we change the whole process to create an environment that will make the best of us go into the education, the first choice of those First Class graduates should be going back into the university system but the condition is not like that today.
So, if we are talking about Nigerian universities not being among one of the best, I know it can’t be, even if the President puts all the necessary facilities there, the human materials there are not the best and only 40% of them will go for the kind of world class that you want if you are talking of world class. Take all the PhD theses that are being passed today in Nigeria, only about one per cent of them will probably meet international, world class standard.
So, one is worried but I am not expecting it; if it happens, I will just think that, that is the usual Nigerian miracle. You know, God is a Nigerian so He does a lot of things for us, whether we do the right thing or not. Somehow, God has a way of performing miracles and then it will just happen.
