Many factors, past and present, contribute to the dysfunctional state of the Nigeria educational system . These include the failures by the government, students, teachers, and education institutions to live up to their different responsibilities, to create an effective learning environment, to foster productive teaching methods, to breed effective and enthusiastic teachers and to produce creative and innovative students.
This article stipulates the failures of government at the national and state level as a key factor and major cause of poor standard of education in Nigeria at the primary, secondary, and tertiary education level.
The reality of 21st-century education presents a global educational system that is designed to bring about functionality, creative thinking, understanding of concepts, critical approach, and analysis in solving problems. In Nigeria, the government may have theoretically upheld to this objective but yet to successfully and practically implement it. Thus, Nigeria standard of education lacks correlation with the reality of 21st-century education.
One of the reasons why Nigerias’ educational system is in numerous crises ranging from waste of resources, infrastructural decay, neglect, and dilapidating conditions of service is laxity in government policies. The formulation and analysis of educational policies is highly epileptic causing damaging influences like poor working environment, poor teaching effectiveness, lack of job satisfaction, poor welfare of teachers, neglect of school needs, and so on.
At the classroom level, an effective government-planned curriculum is in lack. A good curriculum is a roadmap towards a rooted and successful academic path. The methodology of teaching in most schools is a huge concern. Poor research, no standardized update in curriculum or teaching techniques, lack of diligence, poor enforcement strategies, porous rules and regulations, no workable structure!
At the facility level, government negligence in the provision of basic learning equipments and facilities has hindered the effectiveness of the learning space, especially in science and technical classes and in libraries. Government owned schools are the worst hit by this. The conditions of public schools are terrible. Their structures and premises have dilapidated to a pitiable state due to extreme level of negligence.
On bugeting, education presents a frightening figure. Internationally, budget on education is recommended to be 26 percent as suggested by UNESCO. In Nigeria, according to Premium Times Nespaper, it was 6 percent of the N7.30 trillion budget in 2017. This lower budgetary allocation means poor funding of education, resulting to under developed infrastructure, unequipped facilities, poor renumeration of staff, poor student welfare, and so on.
On the incessant disruption of the academic calendar, a lot of damages have been recorded amongst students due to many strike actions and disruption of academic activities, the toll it is taken on students and the entire academic sector can not be over emphasized. Graduates are plagued with half-baked knowledge and inadequate skills to face the labour market. Hence, many graduates are not only unemployed but unemployable.
These government failures are the backbone of other failures like the students’ failures, teachers’ failures, parents’ failures, and education institutions’ failures. With all these failures, education in Nigeria is dazed, weak, and needs an urgent revision.
The model of 6-3-3-4 system of education was used successfully in China, Germany, and Ghana. It was adopted in Nigeria in 1989, but lack of continuity and the anomalies in the educational sector became a clog to the wheel of its effective implementation. Private schools operate a different model, schools are pressured by parents to skip classes for students, students no longer have good assessment reports because teachers are compromised. There is compulsory promotion of all students, double promotion for some, special centre for some exams, and so on. Corruption, lack of accountability, menaced standards, and inability to meet desirable education requirements have taken the lead.
According to statistical reports, Nigeria has over 10 million out of school children, which is the highest in the world. 27 million students perform below average, over 60 million are illiterate, and millions of Nigerians are half educated. There is no hope for a better system of education if the government, education minister, and ministry of education fail to act fast. They need to objectively review educational policies and practically implement them. A workable system needs to be designed towards producing graduates who make use of their head, heart and hands simultaneously, not a certificate syndrome system that is designed to memorize school notes for exams sake and give them back to teachers on the exam day, retaining zero knowledge. This certificate syndrome needs to be de-emphasized because it has led to a lack of practical and qualified technical man power, low creative thinking, poor analytical mind, critical thinking, and problem solving skills amongst learners. There is a huge gap to be bridged for pupils and graduates to be able to fit into the reality of the real world.
Though some educational initiatives have been devised in the past to salvage the collapsing education system in Nigeria, they had minimal effects due to poor implementation and other cankerworms like corruption and negligence.
Education is a fundamental human right. It should be available to all citizens. Government has a pivotal role to play to make reforms where necessary. I call on this present administration to prioritize education and holistically restructure the Nigeria education system to align with modern education techniques.
Amara Ann Unachukwu
