Promoting a transparent system in Nigeria’s education sector will help revamp the sector that has seen several capital and manpower flight in the last two decades, an educationist has said.
Nigeria’s standard of education has dropped hugely, a situation that is evident in the high level of ‘unemployable’ graduates lacking necessary skills necessary to created jobs and grow the economy.
The Executive Director of the Institute of Communication and Corporate Studies, Dr Austin Tam-George, attributed the development to poor funding, mismanagement of appropriated funds, poor monitoring of how funds are used and the absence of punishment for persons found to have mismanaged funds provided for education.
“Investment in education is low due to poor implementation of budgetary allocation to education. The failure of institutions in place to monitor how money appropriated to education is spent has also affected the quality of education in Nigeria,” he told Channels Television on Monday, insisting that an accountable process will go a long way in revamping the education system.
Knowledge-based Economy
As much as funding is affecting the education standard in Nigeria, several educationists have advocated for a redesign of the schools curriculum which has over the years promoted a manufacturing and extractive economy rather than a knowledge-based economy.
Dr Tam-George also emphasised the need for schools curriculum to be redesigned to meet current realities while empowering the students with the necessary skills that could enable them create jobs and not just remain job seekers.
“The curriculum design is faulty and it needs to be redesigned to be skill intensive, with a great deal of emphasis on skills acquisition.
“Countries are evolving from a manufacturing and extractive economy to the knowledge economy. We need to make sure that our curriculum is designed in such a way that will emphasise skills.
“When students emerge from such system, not only will thy be employable, they can also be self employed.
“Ideally, the proper education should prepare a person to create jobs not simply to look out for jobs.
“If the curriculum design in all level is such that there is an emphasises on skill acquisition, you will find out that gradually, we will begin to see persons that will emerge from such institutions not only employable but they can also create jobs,” he emphasised.
He also stressed the need for proper regulation and enforcement of the curriculum, as poor regulatory system and poor enforcement will always result in a retrogressing system even when adequate funding is provided.
Strong Regulatory Oversight
The educationist, however, stressed that all stakeholders in the education sector must make concerted effort to ensure that the system is revamped, as a good education system empowers the citizens to be productive and grow the economy.
“National Policy of Education spells out the specific framework, the kind of specific value system and targets that educational systems should meet. But having a framework is one thing and having it implemented in the educational system is another. Our regulatory framework has collapsed and we do not have the sense of urgency in what happens in the education sector. We need a very strong regulatory body.
“How education policies are implemented should be taken seriously.
“We need strong regulatory oversight, backed by law and backed by committed set of officials in the education bureaucracy,” he said.
To ensure that education gets its fair share of budgetary allocation, the UN education arm has stressed the need for governments around the world to allocate 26 per cent of the country’s budget to education. However, in Nigeria, less than 20 per cent is appropriated to education in the budget and Dr. Tam-George expressed fears that not up to 70 per cent of the funds allocated to the sector were used.
Recently, UNESCO released a report that 10.5 million children that should be in school in Nigeria are out of school, a number Dr. Tam-George said was massive and higher than the population of several countries.
He decried the situation, saying there is no sense of commitment from government and all stakeholders to change the situation.
With the number, Nigeria ranks highest in the category of countries with “out of school children”, a situation that may have been triggered by attacks on schools in the north-east by members of a terrorist group, Boko Haram, who are against western education.
The government has, however, established a ‘Safe School Initiative’ to encourage children in the north-east to go to school. The initiative will provide security among other things in every learning environment in the region that has witnessed more of the terrorists’ attacks.
Chart A New Course
Despite efforts to increase the number of persons that will have access to education in Nigeria, Dr. Tam-George said “there is still need to ensure that the quality of education that an individual gets is such that could empower the individual to create jobs at the end of the day”.
He called for an education summit that would see stakeholders chart a new course for the sector.
“I think the way to go, in order to demonstrate the kind of commitment we should have, is to hold an education summit, where all stakeholders, parents, educationists, development scholars government agencies and donor agencies come together to chat a new course to revamp education in Nigeria.
“It requires a lot of commitment on the side of stakeholders and government.
“We need to find a way to build capacity to make people have the confidence to create jobs rather than looking for job.
“We need to do more. The government has a responsibility to invest massively in education. We don’t seem to get that kind of commitment to turn things around yet. In an election year such as this, you would expect that politicians will raise education as one of the major issue to be discussed in the campaign but you don’t get that sense of commitment.
“The stakeholders must acknowledge that the crises that we are seeing in the sector will affect us all down the line and if we do not act, more and more people will go outside of the the country and when they come back they will have to work with the same mediocre workforce that we find in the country and there will be domino-effect where there are so many mediocre,” he said.