Education is the key to advancement in life. Head of Investigation Desk OLUKAYODE THOMAS and OLAWALE DOWUDU in this report examine what it costs to have a good education in Nigeria today.
EACH for their own reasons; September and October are months that make stakeholders in the education sector either happy or sad when it draws near. For most students, it is end of the long holiday merriment and back to rigorous academic work.
For parents, it is a time when their wallets will be depleted, as hundreds of thousands of naira, sometimes millions, will be paid in school fees and other sundry charges. For teachers in public schools, it is back to the job they love to hate because of the perceived poor pay and harsh conditions of service.
For the owners of private schools, it is harvest time as they rake in millions of naira from parents. With increase in prices of petroleum products, PHCN bills and other economic changes as excuses, private school operators are hiking fees daily.
But what is the state of education and what does it cost to have good quality education? These are the two questions that have continually assailed the minds of most Nigerians.
Three types of schools
A month-long investigation by The Nation revealed that there are three types of schools in the country today.
There are the public primary and secondary schools where the condition of service of the teachers are relatively poor, the infrastructure is in a bad shape and the pupils come to school when they like, they dress shabbily and most of them are indulged by their parents who frown at their wards being disciplined by the school authorities. Also common are sexual and other forms of harassments by either students or teachers.
In the second category are the private schools that are slightly better than their public counterparts. Here the teachers are paid better than those in public schools, but the pay is not regular, teachers are the authorities on all subjects, and masters of all. For instance, a graduate of English may be found teaching History and Government alongside English and Literature-in-English. Most of these schools are just one building or at most a block of flats; they have no space for any extracurricular activity or sports. Like the public schools, most of these schools lack basic amenities such as science laboratory and information technology equipment and other facilities.
This category of school is populated by children of middle class professionals and well-to-do traders.
The third category is the elitist one in Lagos, Abuja and a few sprinkles across the nation. These schools are at par with any secondary or primary school anywhere in the world in terms of teachers’ salaries, environment of learning, equipment and facilities, information technology, but they are outrageously expensive, even more expensive than most private universities in country.
What this invariably means is that only less than five percent of Nigerian parents who are super rich can afford to send their children to these super expensive schools. And that is even for those who prefer to educate their wards at home.
Investigation shows that virtually all categories of professionals such as journalists, doctors, lawyers, civil servants, bankers, oil industry executives and other educated Nigerians send their children to private schools, while majority of others who are in the low income bracket send their wards to dilapidated and poorly staffed public schools.
Situation before now
A concerned parent whose three kids attend St. Saviour Primary School, Ikoyi, Mr. Ali Hassan (not real name), where they pay over N500, 000 each per term said it was never like this in the past. Mr. Hassan, born into a prominent Lagos family, said, “When I was a student at St. Gregory School, Obalende, the only difference between I and other pupils was that they bring me to school in the morning with a Mercedes Benz, then during the holiday, I travelled to United Kingdom and the United States for holiday. But in my class then there were kids whose parents were policemen, not just police officers, security men, drivers, petty traders, and other classes of low-income earners and blue collar workers. We were all friends and studied together in love. Those kids are now top earners in banks and oil companies.”
He lamented that things have changed drastically and education, just like other facets of life, has fallen.
A marketer, who is now a school proprietor, Mr Chris Udoji, said it is a big headache today deciding which school to send your child because getting a good school where children can get good education and sound moral training is difficult. Udoji argued that most Nigerians are under the impression that once a school is very expensive, it must be very good, “but most of those expensive schools turn out students who are morally bankrupt, lacking all the good values.”
He recalled that some years ago, it was easy deciding the school to send your child to because “18 out of 20 were good. Even Federal Government Colleges were no big deal then, it was just the name, there wasn’t much difference between them and other schools.”
He revealed that a good secondary in Lagos today, like British International School, will cost about N2.5 million per annum, while Regent in Abuja will cost about $22,000 per annum. Below them are schools like Rainbow College which costs about N1.2million per annum for a day student and about twice that amount for boarding students.
Ranked below them is a school like St. Gregory and others that have been returned to the missionaries who were the original owners.
Udoji said while environment and buildings are important, “What make a good school are teachers, and there are a few good teachers today, and they want their reward on earth. School owners today do everything to poach the few good ones because they know the parents will bring their kids to such schools.”
Government allocation and state of public schools
Sad as it is, what Udoji described above is the state of public schools today. This beggar’s belief considering the billions spent on education on public schools yearly by government at all levels. In the last five years alone, governments at federal, state and local government levels have spent trillions on education. While figures at the local and state levels are not readily available, federal allocation in the last five years shows that in 2008 it was N210.5 billion, 2009 was N183.3 billion, 2010 (N295.3 billion), 2011 (N365, 888 billion) and 2012 N400.15. The allocation for 2012 excludes money budgeted for Universal Basic Education Commission, Petroleum Technology Development and Education Trust Fund.
There are also allocations by other agencies, states, local governments, UNESCO and other donor agencies, spending on education in 2012 may probably exceed one trillion naira, yet the state of our public schools are below acceptable standard anywhere in the world.
Attempts to get how much of this budget is spent on each pupil were bluntly refused by government officials who claimed they don’t have such figures. An official of Lagos SUBEB who does not want his name in print revealed that “The state government (Lagos) runs a free education programme and so it is not possible to quantify the amount of money spent on each child. The government caters for the provision of infrastructure, textbooks in core subjects and teachers salaries in public primary schools in the state.”
The official was honest to admit that “Because of the free education programme of the state government, the resources available cannot cater effectively for the provision of qualitative education and so we encourage public spirited individuals and corporate organisations under the PPP Initiative (Private Public Partnership) to join hands with the government to intervene in critical areas of the education sector.”
Save for a few schools renovated by corporate bodies, majority of the schools in Lagos and other states are in terrible shape. Most lack basic learning facilities and essential amenities like toilets, play grounds, and amenities that could enable the schools produce rounded students.
With average salary of graduate teachers in public schools at N48, 000 per month after deductions, and about N150, 000 for those on grade level 15, most of the teachers in these schools are there because they don’t have alternatives, they are ready to quit once they get better corporate jobs, or teaching jobs in private schools that pay higher.
To make ends meet, most of the teachers engage in other forms of business which they give priority over their teaching jobs.
All manners of private schools
Because of the fall of standard in public schools, most parents who have the financialmuscle now send their wards to private primary and secondary schools.
Like every other things in Nigeria, the proliferation of schools has led to a sharp fall in standard, with many schools sited in unhygienic environments that are not conducive for learning.
With the connivance of government officials at all levels, sub-standard schools are registered with majority of them being run as business enterprise, with proprietors doing everything possible to minimise expenses and maximise profit.
Parents too are not unaware of the fact that the standards are below par but because many of them are “miracle centres”, so called because students that attempt school certificate examinations in these schools are guaranteed 90% chance of success.
Many parents’ strive to send their wards to these “miracle centres”, not minding the exorbitant amounts charged by proprietors.
Abuja parents and high school fees
Parents in different parts of the country complain about expensive private schools, but investigation revealed that those in Abuja pay more compared to those from other parts of the country. Abuja parents pay as high as N1.5m to N2.5m per session for good secondary schools in the city. One of such schools is Pacesetters Academy, Wuse, said to be owned by a politician from the South-South. It charges above N1m per session including other fees. At the Nigerian Turkish International School, Abuja, students pay over N1.5m per session. White Plain British School, Jabi, Capital Science Academy, Lugbe, and Loyola Jesuit College are other very expensive schools in Abuja.
In some Abuja schools, fees are paid in US dollars and one of such is the Regent Schools. Pupils in nursery pay about a thousand dollars. Annual fee for students in years 7-11 is about $10,000.00!
Concerned about the outrageous fees charged by owners of private primary and secondary schools, Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyat Rufa’i, recently said the Federal Government would meet with owners of private schools, to dialogue on the “prohibitively” high cost of fees being charged.
Rufa’i said at a public forum, “in Nigeria today, if a child is going to a private secondary school and gets admission to the public universities, his parents may have paid more to sustain him or her in a secondary school than a university.
“But because of the complaints that it is becoming unbearable for Nigerians, we probably will call and hold a meeting with them and see how to make it a little bit more uniform, these high school fees are going out of control. I assure you that we will call a meeting of the owners of these private institutions and discuss with them how to move forward. We may have to do that because it is getting out of control.” But this seems to be just talks since the Minister made the statement, nothing has changed. In fact, one could safely say it has gone from bad to worse. The owner of the Prime Scholar’s Academy, Abuja, Dr. Titilayo Shittu, blamed indiscriminate issuance of license to all manners of people, including traders who have no passion for education as being responsible for astronomical increase in school fees.
“I tell you, if you don’t really have passion for education, you cannot run a school because education is not a money-making venture. Some of these people are not bothered about quality. That is why where a school uniform is made could determine where they enrol their children. That is not reasonable. Government must do the right thing by strengthening its unit and ensuring that passionate educators are given operational licence,” Dr. Shittu told journalists recently.
Desire by parents to give their children quality education led to many parents sending their children to schools in foreign countries; the preferred destinations by parents are United Kingdom, United States and Ghana. It is estimated that about 71,000 Nigerian students in Ghana will pay approximately N160 billion as tuition fees this year alone, this is 40 per cent of the 2012 education budget.
Studies show that in 2010 about N246 billion was spent by Nigerian parents on their wards schooling in the United Kingdom, this is about 60 per cent of the 2012 education allocation.
The Director of the Federal Scholarship Board (FSB), Mrs. Hindatu Abdullahi, recently said that the Federal Government spent more than N900 million to sponsor 150 students abroad last year.
Experts’ opinion
Renowned professor of education, Philomena Bola Ikulayo of the University of Lagos sees everything wrong with our education system. According to her, education is sound knowledge acquired for good value, “What we need to strive for is education that will make children responsible and useful additions to our society, education that is worthy for its own use. A totality for the good of the person and others, like springs of water that benefit everybody.”
She added that “Children today want to fly before they walk. Parents pay to get children into special centres to get good grade into university. This led to post -JAMB examination, because children that score high in JAMB were doing badly in schools, that was why we started post-JAMB because we discovered a lot of manipulations in JAMB examination.”
One of the favourite sayings of Chief MKO Abiola was, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Perhaps it is with this in mind that most parents spare no efforts to get the best for their wards. But this could be better if our public schools are better managed and funded.
