Tag: secondary education

Apart from extending Basic Education benefits to include current senior secondary education, decentralisation of the curriculum should be one of the major steps in education reform.

Man is the sole dynamic in nature; and accordingly, every individual constitutes the supreme economic potential which a country possesses. It is axiomatic that man can create nothing. But, by an intelligent and purposive application of the exertions of his body and mind, he can exploit natural resources to produce goods and service….. Therefore, other things being equal, the healthier his body and the more educated his mind, the greater will be his morale and the more efficient he becomes as a producer and consumer. —Obafemi Awolowo

The ability to read, write, and analyse; the confidence to stand up and demand justice and equality, the qualifications and connections to get your foot in that door and take your seat at that table—all of that starts with education.—Michelle Obama

We concluded the first part of this essay last week with an excerpt from the section on education in the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) recently released by the federal government: “The shifts in the global economy, the emergence of new sectors and the digital revolution have changed the skills required of the work force. Nigeria has to reposition its education sector to prepare its young people to cope with the changing technological and economic environment. As things stand, limited access to basic education and science and technology courses coupled with insufficient capacity and sub-standard infrastructure at the tertiary level mean that the work force lacks the critical skills needed to develop the economy.” The focus today is on what needs to be done to achieve, through education, citizen empowerment and national economic, political, and social development.

It is logical to assume that the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan has overtaken the pledge on education made during the 2015 campaign, given the fact that the pledge was made before the realities thrown up by recession and the imperative of economic diversification. The pre-election manifesto to “fully implement and enforce the provisions of the Universal Basic Education Act with emphasis on gender equity in primary and secondary school enrolment whilst improving the quality and substance of our schools” seems to have been eclipsed by the new emphasis of ERGP “to reposition the education sector to prepare its young people to cope with the changing technological and economic environment” and the realisation that “limited access to basic education and science and technology courses coupled with insufficient capacity and substandard infrastructure at the tertiary level mean that the work force lacks the critical skills needed to develop the economy.”

As our economic realities alter our political and cultural ideology, so must our political vision be allowed to shape our economy, polity, and society. The ERGP seems to have started to think out of the box that had hobbled national development and citizen welfare for far too long, particularly in respect of the place of education in the life of a nation and the wellbeing of its citizens. At the beginning of Nigeria, it was colonial ideology that drove form and method of education. Missionary schools and a few public schools were created to train workers for the colonial economy and government: production of interpreters for colonial masters; assistants in the administration of the colony; training of citizens to assist in improving production of raw materials needed in Europe.

After independence, the political ideology for governing the country still focused in many parts of the country on raw materials, such as crude oil.  This economic vision made it easy for the federal military government to focus on education with limited access to primary and secondary education. Just a few states saw free primary and secondary education as the right of citizens. To the central government, Unity Schools became more important than free public secondary education for all citizens. Free access to nine years of basic education was established by Obasanjo’s civilian presidency after the 1999 post-military administration.

Apart from states in the former Western Region, free public secondary education was not seen as a priority in most states of the federation. Even in those states with free secondary education, quality of public secondary education suffered so much in the last few decades that many parents opted to enrol their children in private secondary schools, with the result that public secondary schools started to become educational ghettoes for those whose parents could not afford private secondary education. It was only in the last few years that some of such states started revitalising a few public secondary schools as model or mega schools. Despite efforts to create model schools in the form of Federal Unity Schools or State Mega Schools, the country has been compelled to realise after the fall in prices of petroleum that there is a need “to reposition its education sector to prepare its young people to cope with the changing technological and economic environment.”

ERGP seems to have changed the education discourse in the country. Political and cultural leaders who thought for decades that education should be treated as elite good now seem to have come to terms with the inevitability of education to building and sustaining a modern multiethnic country. ERGP suggests that there is a need for a major reform, if not a revolution, in the education sector. The challenge is for the various levels of government in the federation to think anew about what type of education to give citizens in the effort to reposition the country for global competitiveness economically and to prepare the citizenry for a life worth living for all.

Now that politicians, i.e. those who control or struggle to be in control of allocation of values in the country accept that education is crucial to development, each of the three levels of government needs to commit to reforms that emphasize equity, access, quality, and relevance in the conceptualizing, planning, and funding of education with a view to make public secondary education the center piece of educational policies in the country. Abandoning provision of public secondary education to market forces may not make the country competitive in a globe in which more advanced economies like the USA, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, etc are providing their citizens with free and compulsory public secondary education.  It is common knowledge that over 80% of people who contribute to the U.S. economy are products of public school system. To act as if Nigeria can become competitive without making the first 14 years of schooling free and compulsory is to engage in wishful thinking.

Furthermore, any attempt to centralise education may also not bring the benefits that the country requires to become and remain competitive. Any attempt to impose a uniform or central curriculum may be counter-productive. Apart from extending Basic Education benefits to include current senior secondary education, decentralisation of the curriculum should be one of the major steps in education reform. States and local governments need to participate in the design of curriculum and reform of teaching and learning methods and customise any aspect of these that can add value to education at subnational levels. States and local governments need to decide what should be the goals of free and compulsory schooling from pre-school to high school. Each state ought to determine whether it needs a comprehensive public education system or an academic one that focuses on preparing students solely for entry to degree programmes. There are many research-based policy decisions to be made, and such decisions should be left to both politicos and experts from each subnational government.

The creation of an education that can produce efficient producers and consumers, to borrow Awolowo’s phrase, produce self-confident and analytical citizens that Michelle Obama believes can demand for equality and justice and sustain democracy captured in the words of Michelle Obama’s requires more rigorous and honest thinking than we have given the matter of education in the last few decades in the country. It is about time all levels of governance in the country engaged sincerely in making policies that can bring more meaning to provision of education and prepare the country for benefits enjoyed by other countries with cultural diversity. It is now too late to view education as factories for credentials to qualify citizens for slots in federal or state jobs to implement Federal Character principle. What is needed is to produce citizens that can be creators of value in a world where value creation and addition require more knowledge and skills than when all that was needed was selling petroleum to generate revenue to allocate to various levels of government to spend, more with the hope of national unity than national development.

To this extent, nine years of basic education may not be enough to prepare citizens for the complexity of modern and postmodern society.

When all the talents in society are not fully developed, it is not the individuals that are adversely affected alone who suffer; the society as a whole suffers as well. Now, granting that every Nigerian is given an opportunity to develop his talents, it is imperative that he should also be given an opportunity to employ these developed talents….— Obafemi Awolowo
Man is the sole dynamic in nature; and accordingly, every individual constitutes the supreme economic potential which a country possesses. It is axiomatic that man can create nothing. But, by an intelligent and purposive application of the exertions of his body and mind, he can exploit natural resources to produce goods and service….. Therefore, other things being equal, the healthier his body and the more educated his mind, the greater will be his morale and the more efficient he becomes as a producer and consumer .—Obafemi Awolowo

The short statement by President Buhari after returning from his treatment in the United Kingdom: “My single advice is that we must take education seriously, and we must do much more to educate our children,” captures the essence of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s description in the quotations above about the value of education, which is also the theme of today’s piece: Imperative of expansion and improvement of access to good public education for citizens of Nigeria.

The John Tosho verdict which inspired the last two columns pertained to the nine years of what governments in Nigeria call Basic Education. According to Tosho’s judgement, it is only the years of Basic Education that are constitutionally free and compulsory for all citizens within the school age. But this writer believes that the confusion between Basic education and the remaining three years of pre-tertiary education called senior secondary should be a matter of debate or conversation. This conversation is vital in view of President Buhari’s growing love for education of the masses of our people, aptly captured in his advice that ‘we take education seriously. All things being equal, pioneers of Universal Basic Education (UBE) under former President Obasanjo should be in high school by now. Most of them, except those in the old Western Region are likely to be paying school fees, if they enroll in post-UBE schools and probably on the street selling all manners of imported odds and ends, if they are unable to pay required fees for the three years of senior secondary.

It has been argued by sociologists of education that Obasanjo must have left out the senior secondary years for reasons of cost management and with the hope that subsequent governments would find it logical to extend basic education to cover three years of high school for UBE foundation students. But the importance of education today is too overwhelming for any public affairs commentator to engage in hair-splitting arguments about what Obasanjo thought, did not think, or could have done to remove the illogicality in providing free public education for nine years, charging fees for three years of high school, and then offering free tuition at the university level.

In view of radical changes in respect of means of acquiring, transferring, and storing information and with respect to the mercurial nature of the character of work in response to mind-bending advances in science and technology, many countries are reforming or considering reforming their education in compliance with new realities. Even though the country’s leaders have talked citizens to stupor about reforming education, particularly at annual release of WAEC and NECO examination results, no noticeable effort has been made since the unearthing of Obasanjo’s UBE reform. Talk of education reform has been one of promise and failure for the past 10 years of post-military governance.

But President Buhari’s inspiring message about the importance of education to the survival of Nigeria shows why Nigeria should not continue to promise and fail on reform of education in terms of expansion of access and improvement of quality of public education. For a country that is projected to become the 4th or 5th largest in the world in the next twenty years, it will be very foolish to play the ostrich game on matters of educating the millions of mouths to feed, bodies to protect from or cure of diseases, to transport, clothe, and protect from vagaries of nature and culture, etc.

As the human world becomes more complex, so will the business of educating citizens for the future get more complicated than it has been. Such complexity will require more people with high-level literacy, numeracy, communication, and computer competence to respond to the new culture of work that is emerging. In this respect, it is not only those who want to earn university degrees that will need a good measure of these skills but also those that may choose to acquire skills from vocational colleges. To this extent, nine years of basic education may not be enough to prepare citizens for the complexity of modern and postmodern society. If Nigeria is not financially buoyant enough to provide free public education to citizens from pre-school to undergraduate level, like Germany or Scotland, to name a few, it should strive to provide free public education from Kindergarten to High School, thus needing to make the present three years of senior secondary free and compulsory, as it is in many countries including the United States of America, Finland, Brazil, to name a few. It is common knowledge that about 80% of graduates in the United States, the epicentre of private economy, are products of public education.

Now that cultural and political leaders from various corners of the country, including sections that had been lukewarm about mass education for about half a century, recognise Awolowo’s point about the centrality of mass education to sustainable democratic polity and society, political and bureaucratic leaders should feel encouraged to think out of the box about the type of education that can push the country to sustainable development. Making education free and compulsory for all citizens in the school-age bracket is a good way to start thinking anew.

Most countries that are doing well and have thus become models for our leaders in many respects do not abandon the education of citizens to the private sector. To do so is to create unequal societies of overlords and underclass, just as it is already in many states of the federation. Completion of high school, i.e. twelve years of schooling should be free and compulsory for every citizen wherever he/she may live within the country. I can almost hear those that obsess over five credits in WAEC or NECO scream for this page about loss of investment demonstrated by the gap each year between input and outcome in terms of percentage of students with mandatory five credits to enter universities. Education is not only about the number that can qualify for university admission; it is also about the number of persons that can benefit from exposure to the culture of learning. All the people who fail to obtain five credits are likely to be better in whatever career they choose than those with no opportunity for the three years of high school closed to millions of citizens because of tuition charges.

There is no better way to end today’s piece than to quote from the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) recently released by the Federal Government in Section 5.2 on Education: “The shifts in the global economy, the emergence of new sectors and the digital revolution have changed the skills required of the work force. Nigeria has to reposition its education sector to prepare its young people to cope with the changing technological and economic environment. As things stand, limited access to basic education and science and technology courses coupled with insufficient capacity and sub-standard infrastructure at the tertiary level mean that the work force lacks the critical skills needed to develop the economy.”

Next week will focus on how to make public education achieve its objectives of citizen empowerment and national development.

To be continued