Asks Government to Reverse the Underfunding and Privatization of Primary and Secondary Education in order to Improve Quality of Education
Press Statement
The Education Rights
Campaign (ERC) condemns the new cut off marks announced by JAMB which lowers to
outrageous levels the minimum requirement for admission into universities,
Polytechnics and Colleges of Education. We hereby demand an urgent reversal of
this policy.
We wish to elucidate
our opposition to this policy while responding to two arguments offered by the
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede to justify it.
According to Guardian
newspaper of 25 August 2017, the JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede based his
justification of this decision on the fact that “most of the institutions
except a few has never filled 70 percent of their admission capacity in the
last 10 years”. This if true is truly disheartening.
Every year, nearly 2
million candidates apply for admission, but less than 500, 000 are admitted
leaving a huge shortfall. Before now, the popular belief was that the reason
for this situation is because there are too few tertiary institutions available
for the increasing number of admission seekers. The new twist added to this
debate by the JAMB registrar only further underlines the monumental crises
afflicting public education and the emergency the situation has already become.
As a result of the
collapse of quality education at primary and secondary school levels over the
years occasioned by poor funding and the emergence of private unregulated and
usually below-standards private schools, the quality of candidates for
admissions has progressively worsened. This is reflected in the annual average
performance in qualifying examinations like WASSCE which shows that
increasingly fewer numbers of products of secondary schools are able to make
credits in 5 subjects. This collapse of quality education at secondary school
level is no doubt the outcome of the policy of underfunding and education
privatization pursued by successive governments over the last three decades
which saw a boom in establishment of private schools many without any real
facility nor quality teachers – a variety of which is beginning to manifest at
the tertiary levels today.
But this problem will
not be solved by artificially lowering the cut-off marks. By lowering the
cut-off marks, JAMB is effectively preparing the ground for another crisis in
the medium and long term. Moreso, if the quality of education continues to
worsen as it definitely would if government fails to step in with more funding,
it is only a matter of time before candidates are unable to make 120 cut-off
marks. If this happens, would JAMB lower it to 50?
For us in the ERC, the
proper way to rectify this kind of problem is by reversing the underfunding an privatization
of primary and secondary education through government massive investment in
public schools. Government must aggressively begin to rebuild decayed school
infrastructures across the country, establish new schools and employ more
teachers and support staff with improved remunerations. These if done with
devotion, dedication and with clear intention to use public resources to meet
people’s needs can reverse the rot afflicting public education within a decade.
As far as we are
concerned, there is no other way to increase the quality of students and their
overall performance in qualifying examinations other than by improving quality
of education and infrastructures in schools. This would require that government
halts its anti-poor policies of education underfunding and commercialization
and immediately improve funding of education in order to address the acute
shortfall in infrastructures and quality staff which is the bane of public
education in the country. So long government continues to underfund public
education; the quality of students will continue to worsen.
In the same vein,
Leadership newspaper of August 25, 2017, the JAMB quotes the Registrar, Ishaq
Oloyede, also while justifying the new cut-off marks saying that, “30 per cent
of those in higher institutions do not take JAMB or have less than the cut-off
marks. The admission process is now automated with direct involvement of the
registrar of JAMB for final approval. “We have agreed to regularize admissions
that were done under the table this year. From next year we will not accept
anything like that”.
The above quote gives
the impression that there is more behind the decision to lower the cut-off
marks than the above-cited excuse given by the JAMB Registrar. Private tertiary
institutions are the usual culprit of this kind of lawlessness because they are
often undersubscribed and are always cutting corners to increase their intake. In
any case, the ERC rejects this attempt to legalize illegality. We hereby demand
the names of the institutions that engaged in unlawful admission of candidates
to be publicly disclosed and duly penalized.
We wish to remind the
JAMB Registrar that JAMB is a public institution funded by tax payers’ monies
and that he was appointed to act in favour of the interests of the general
public and not private interests. Therefore if some tertiary institutions
admitted students “under the table” or without following laid down rules and
guidelines, the least the public expects and would accept is that they are
penalized and if they are private Universities, their licenses should be
revoked. To then use this illegality to take a decision that could throw our
education into further crisis is unacceptable.
Hassan Taiwo Soweto Ibukun
Omole
National Coordinator (07033697259) National Secretary
