DESPITE the allocation of over N237 billion for basic
education between 2009 and 2013, recent data
shows that only about three million more students
were admitted into the nation’s primary schools.
With the population growth witnessed over the past
four years, it is no wonder Nigeria’s 10.5 million
out-of- school children are still unaccounted for.
Supervising Minister of Education, Barr. Nyesom
Wike at the Nigerian Economic Summit held
recently, pin-pointed the challenges facing basic
education in Nigeria. At the summit tagged:
Transforming education through partnerships for
global competitiveness, Wike said that primary
school enrolment had increased from 21,857, 011 in
2009 to 24,071,559 in 2013.
Unaccessed UBE funds
The reasons for this, Wike said, include: “Huge
amount of unaccessed UBE funds to the tune of
about N44bn; large number of unqualified teachers
in the system in many states despite the fact that
about N19bn was spent on training about 825,035
teachers; non-response from states to their
responsibility of recruiting and paying of facilitators’
allowances based on minimum standard of N7,500
per month as agreed for the Mass and Adult
literacy Programmes; Lack of willingness by end-
users to adopt the implementation procedure for the
new school curriculum, low girl-child enrolment
and boy-child drop-out, conflict between public
policies in education at the federal level and
implementation trends at state and local levels in
the primary and secondary education sub-sector,”
among others.
Secondary school enrolment has faced a far worse
fate; while enrolment in 2009 was 3, 107, 287, the
2013 figure is 4,219,679. The acting education
minister blamed this poor improvement on
“inadequate facilities and infrastructure to cater for
some of the newly introduced subjects which
include trade/entrepreneurship studies despite the
fact that the new curriculum was approved by NCE
since 2007 and implementation commenced in
2011, inadequate number of qualified teachers as
well as subject officers in examination bodies for
the newly introduced trade/entrepreneurship
subjects; Ineffective supervision and inspection of
schools continue to hinder quality assurance,
conflict between public policies in education at the
federal level and implementation trends at state and
local levels in senior secondary education sub-
sector.”
Concerning tertiary education, Wike argued that
there remains a wide gap between the extant
programmes of “tertiary institutions and the
requirements in the world of work,” adding that
“another challenge is the epileptic academic
calendar in tertiary institutions occasioned by the
industrial strike actions by staff unions.
Tertiary institutions
Some tertiary institutions have not been able to fully
access the funds allocated to them through
TETFund due to their inability to meet the laid down
conditionalities and that on its own part, TETFund
does not have all the human resources required to
effectively monitor the projects being executed in
the institutions.”
One time Minister of Education, Prof. Oby Ezekwesili
was also a speaker at the conference. In her
presentation entitled: Education: For what
purpose?, she argued that the “tertiary educational
model is ridden with what is technically known as
the funnel syndrome.” She said:‘We are assimilating
and educating only a fraction of the critical mass of
society – the youth – while neglecting a larger
uneducated mass. In essence, we are producing
less and less of the leaders of tomorrow: the
managers, the entrepreneurial class, the teachers,
the doctors, the policy makers, the law enforcement
officers, the professionals. By 2020, we may have a
significant population of highly trained, skilled and
motivated criminals.”
She therefore called upon the government to create
jobs, eradicate poverty, increase access to
education and grow the economy through innovation
using its human capital.
Her words: “Industries need new ideas, creativity,
innovation and people with skills, talent and
entrepreneurship to produce goods and services
sold for a profit in the market. Partnerships
between government monitoring and regulating the
innovative institutions developing these skills and
the employers, will create a powerful network for
centres of excellence.”
No comments:
Post a Comment