Olabisi Deji-Folutile

Many of us think we know the extent of the rot in Nigeria’s education sector, but, believe me, what we know is probably just the tip of the iceberg. For instance, I never knew it was possible for a secondary school pupil in this country not to have an answer to as simple a question as “when were you born?’’ But alas, a girl, who was supposedly in SS2 in Imo State, declared that she was born in 1905. Sensing that something was wrong with the answer from the facial expressions of everyone around her, she changed the date to 1945. When asked to write her name, she wrote “Ezne” instead of “Ezinne.”

If you think I made this up or it’s an exaggeration, other examples of blunders from some of these schoolchildren will make you think otherwise. A pupil in JSS2 was asked to write “Lizard” and he wrote “Eliza.” Another one in SS2 defined a citizen as “anyone who can go anywhere and do anyhow.’’ A Christian pupil in JSS2 could not open the Book of Numbers in the Bible, while some pupils in JSS1 did not see anything wrong with saying, “Our daddy are going to work.’’

The teachers are not left out. A teacher in a private primary school, I learnt, sent a note to a parent informing her that “her daughter have not bring her note to class.’’ Another teacher in a secondary school in Badagry, Lagos State, is fond of telling his pupils: “I see you here, I see you there, are you twice?” Another one asks his pupils to “open the window and let the climate come in,’’ while a host of others teach in their dialects.

I have come to the sad conclusion that no matter what I write, no magic will scale up the performance of a lot of Nigerian children in external examinations in the next 10 years, at least. More than one million students failed the 2014 May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination. Out of the 1,705,976 candidates that sat the exam, 1,176,551 performed below the minimum requirement for admission to any Nigerian university. Only 529,425 candidates (31.28 per cent) had credit in five subjects including English and Mathematics.

Ironically, Ghanaian students have consistently won the prizes for the top three positions of the examination body at the international awards for best candidates in its five-member countries.

If current results are harvests of seeds sown in the past, as some may argue, I’m afraid of what awaits us in the future. Certainly, the seeds we are sowing now cannot yield any meaningful fruit, no, not in the nearest future. I must admit that, for the children of the elite and the middle class, the picture is far rosier. The ones I pity are the children of poor Nigerians. For them, it is indeed a dim future.

Compare a typical Nigerian child to someone like Chester Smith, a young chap I met during my tour of the Space Centre in Houston, the United States of America. Now 27, Chester works at the space centre. But, he was mentored by scientists and astronomers at the space centre right from his secondary school days. He had many opportunities of visiting the centre. This fuelled his imagination and helped him to follow the path that would make him live his dream.

I must confess that even as an adult, I found the space centre mind-boggling. There are more than 400 space artefacts, including a moon rock that one can touch. Seeing mission control room from where human space missions and the operations of the International Space Centre are monitored gave one this behind-the-scenes look at space exploration. I even saw one of the astronauts, live; an experience that our guide said was uncommon. Seeing the most powerful rocket ever built and watching the live mission updates and the future of human space were simply amazing. At a time, I felt as if I was lost in space myself.

Every year, more than 100,000 teachers and students around the world visit the space centre. Sadly, these are the same children that Nigerian kids who can’t spell their names are expected to compete with in this ever-growing and dynamic world. How possible is this?

It is unfortunate that the children of the poor in this country will always bear the brunt of our poor education system. And it doesn’t have to be so. Almost 90 per cent of Ghana’s children are accessing quality education at government’s expense. Some even aver that the country is spending proportionately more on education than the United Kingdom.

The problem with Nigeria goes beyond poor funding. Sometimes, the little funds available are not well-utilised. I once wrote on billions of naira meant for primary education rotting away at the Central Bank of Nigeria. The money is still there. We are not just a serious country.

The Indian education system is one of the poorly funded in the world, yet it manages to maintain a standard that can compare with China’s, which is known to be one of the best in the world.

While serious governments are thinking of how to make their children perform better, we are playing kites with our own kids. Even, the United Kingdom that we look up to as a good destination for education recently took over 60 mathematics teachers from China to teach pupils in its centres of excellence.

In the same vein, China that many developed countries believe to be the best in mathematics still encourages its teachers to be more intelligent in both the way they teach the subject, and the work they require of their students. The teachers are expected to hook on to locally-organised teachers’ research group where they can get suggestions for good lesson plans. That is not all. The teachers are expected to complete between 240 and 540 hours of further training every five years. Anyone that does not reach a certain level is fired. No wonder, China has continued its ascent as a major economic power.

But, here government at all levels keeps paying lip service to education. Our minister is only interested in fighting corruption in the system. He will deal with corrupt lecturers and teachers. What does that mean? As for the governors, they value their political ambition above the lives of Nigerian children.

The governors keep deceiving themselves that they are working. Even when they understand the problems, they lack the political will to proffer solutions. Take for instance the case of the Comrade governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole, who publicly ridiculed a teacher who could not read. When it was time to choose between ensuring quality education in the state and his second term ambition, he gladly chose the latter.

Other governors have accused their teachers of not being able to solve primary three mathematics, yet they have retained them. They can’t afford the political backlash that sacking them would generate. Which country does that and makes progress?

How can we be keeping teachers who ask their pupils to “open the window for climate to come in” in the system in the 21st century? No amount of training and retraining can redeem such teachers.

We will keep dreaming of a better country forever until we address the problems bedevilling our education sector. Only quality education can give us the hope of quality leadership.

Investment in education goes beyond structures. Government at all levels should engage smart teachers. There should be training and retraining programmes for them, and they should be forced to engage in self-development as is being done in serious nations of the world.

Source :http://www.punchng.com/?p=12887

Building schools without employing competent teachers is like recruiting a goat to teach a cub.. Its a pity the education system is already in rot.. The government, the teachers as well as the students/pupils all have a quota to that effect

I used to think it is only common in sokoto,zamfara et al. Not knowing it is across board. Which way nija

only God can help us ooo