Culled from the Daily Independent Newspaper, 1st October 2014.
Taiwo Hassan-Soweto is the National Coordinator of the Education Rights Campaign (ERC). In this interview with REPORTER, SEYI TAIWO-OGUNTUASE, he spoke on the Nigeria’s education system since independence and other salient issues on the sector.
Nigeria at 54, what is your assessment of Nigeria’s education system till date?
If a graph of Nigeria’s education system is plotted, it would show
from the mid-80s onward a consistent decline. The generations of 60s and
70s are literate generations. Members of these generations are till
today still some of the best in arts, science and several other fields
you can think of. But, where is the generation of the 90s? Aside one or
two exceptions, the real lost generation is the one that was born in the
mid-80s onward and started schooling in the 90s when government at all
levels had started implementing the IMF/World bank inspired capitalist
policies of education that encourages underfunding and
commercialization.
Those who attended public schools are the best today. They are the
ones ruling us today in different political capacities and in the
business world. And tragically, some of them are the ones arguing that
what worked for them would not work for this generation. We need to
fight for free education at all levels as the first step to begin to
reposition the education sector.
Can you point at the pluses, minuses and possibly areas that require improvement?
I cannot simply place my fingers on what the government has done
well. Success cannot be hidden neither does it need to be advertised on
the pages of newspapers and television. If government has performed,
everyone would see. Let me give you an example. For years now, starting
with the former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, Nigeria
has been spending billions annually on Universal Basic Education (UBE)
as part of a larger strategy to achieve and ensure the Millennium
Development Goals (MDG) of education for all by year 2015. 2015 is just
some months away and what has been accomplished? Recently the 11th
Education-For-All Global Monitoring Report of UNESCO said and I quote
that “Nigeria may not meet the Education-for-All Goals 1, 2 and 4 in
2015”. I wonder why UNESCO is being conditional; it is now clear to
everyone that Nigeria is not meeting any goals and instead; we have
suffered unimaginable setbacks in certain areas?
Few years ago, school-age children in Nigeria that are not attending
school of any type are about 7.3million and it has increased to 10.5
million. Nigeria’s out-of-school population not only grew the most in
absolute terms of any country in the world since 2004, by a whopping 3.4
million, but also had the 4th highest growth rate in the world. 6
million of the 36 million girls out of school world-wide are Nigerians.
Enrolment of children into schools is as low as 12.0 per cent in some
states.
Where has government faulted in all of these and what steps should the country to right some of these wrongs?
They are many, number one is poor funding. Nigeria has consistently
and for decades now flouted the UNESCO recommendation of 26 per cent
budgetary allocation to education. Never mind when they say education
received the second highest or third highest priority of a budget. Most
times, the allocation to education is not above 12 per cent in most
cases it is around 8 per cent.
Also, is the short supply of manpower to adequately service the
education sector? The quality of teachers is abysmal. But, before you
start blaming the teachers; just take a look at the Colleges of
Education. If these colleges as bad as it is are places where the
Nation’s teachers are being trained, then please we can no more
justifiably express moral outrage at annual mass failure in WASSCE and
other examinations.
You cannot plant maize and expect to reap yam. As you lay your bed,
so you shall lie on it. For years now, the Colleges of Education
Academic Staff Union (COEASU) has been clamoring for uplifting of the
Colleges. Several hundreds of thousands of teachers are lacking in schools.
That is why Nigeria has a high teacher/student ratio. In the
Universities, there is a huge gap in manpower availability. Instead of
having not less than 80 per cent of the academics with PhDs, only 43 per
cent of academic staff in our Universities is PhD holders.
In addition to these is the crisis of infrastructure. Our schools
lack the key infrastructure required for 21st century education. Poor
infrastructure adversely affects teaching, research, learning, students’
health and safety.
Fourth, there is the problem with curriculum. As currently
structured, the curriculum is very neo-colonial. We need a curriculum
that is related to the needs and aspirations of our society. These
include manpower needs. There are of course many other problems like
scarcity and prohibitive cost of books among others.
These problems may appear difficult, but they are also simple. Why we
have not tackled them is because it is simply not in the best interest
of the capitalist ruling elite to have a flourishing, qualitative and
accessible public education system that can permit children of the poor
masses to be educated. They reckon that when the poor are educated, they
become impossible to enslave and enslavement for the purpose of
extracting profit is actually the fundamental aim of capitalism.
All these problems can be surmounted in a few years if we have in
place a pro-masses socialist government for instance. There are many
things such a government would do to address each of these highlighted
problems. But, a central and fundamental step that must be taken first
and foremost before it can be possible to begin to address problems of
curriculum, teacher quality and infrastructures is for the funding to be
improved. Nigeria has enough money to fund education at all levels
appropriately up to the point of providing it free of charge. To ensure
that funding directly gets to the schools and are not mismanaged as it
is rampant today, the running of schools have to be democratised to
permit students, teachers, parents and communities a chance to be part
of decisions on how the school is run. Once there is funding, then it
would be possible to begin to provide the right infrastructure in
schools.
Has private sector participation in the sector made any difference, good or bad?
If looked at holistically, private sector participation in the
education sector has done more harm than good. Let’s start at the
primary and secondary levels. At these levels, I must admit that private
schools have allowed parents including working class parents to be able
to send their children to schools against the background of the
complete collapse of the public option.
So, for a few years in the 90s, private schooling appeared as a
credible option for many parents. But today, the same rot that collapsed
the public schools has caught up with the private schools. It is even
worse in some of these schools because of the lack of public scrutiny
and the laxity of regulatory officials.
Many so-called international private schools are located in one-room
apartments where children are crammed together. No facilities, no
playground, absolutely nothing. Their teachers are mostly secondary
school leavers. Yet they charge tens of thousands as fees.
At the University level, private sector involvement has failed.
Despite the existence of private Universities, vast majority do not
still have access to education. Annually, over 800,000 are still unable
to gain admission. So the reality is that the general public has not
gained much from private sector participation because in the end, only
the rich can afford these universities. The unfortunate aspect of it all is that the private sector
involvement has reinforced the feeling of inequality among young people.
Many young people who because of the poverty of their family have no
choice but to attend public Universities are feeling a sense of
inferiority, class and inequality that has increased their frustration.
What steps can government take to make local school competitive in the global arena?
Give lecturers and students the facilities to work with and our
Universities can become one of the top best 10 within the next twenty
years. There is nothing wrong with our genes. Nigerians are some of the
best professionals abroad. Our students are some of the best in foreign
Universities. It is the crippling neo-liberal education policies of
Nigeria’s capitalist ruling elites that have reduced us to this level of
underdevelopment.
All we need is a complete turnaround in facilities, we need to
rebuild school infrastructure, we need to revamp the colleges of
education and train our teachers in better environments, and we need to
employ more teachers and academic staff.
To attract the best to the teaching profession, we need to improve
the wages of teachers. Teachers should be kings. A society where
politicians earn more than teachers, doctors and all those who make the
wheel of industry turn will die. Also our curriculum must be
re-structured to correspond to our country’s history, needs and
aspirations. For instance we need more engineers, more doctors, more
teachers, more scientists, more agronomists, and more artists. Only an
education system that contributes to society’s just, harmonious and
peaceful development is a successful education system.
