While speaking of the failing educational system in Nigeria, Founder of School’s Compass, Oluwayomi Ojo, says that the system that produces candidates for WAEC, should be reviewed.
“The woeful performance of students in the West African Examination Council, (WAEC), starts from Jss1, not the final examination classes of Junior secondary school 3 Or senior secondary school 3, ” he said.
This only proves that the government should have “raised the bar of education from the scratch,” Mr Ojo added.
According to him, in most cases, the school merely passes the students during the internal examinations and leaves them to be judged eventually by external examination bodies such as WAEC, who unfortunately do not run such a curriculum of ‘automatic promotion’.
Analysing the issue of unmerited ‘automatic promotion’ granted to some students, he explained further, giving instances whereby a class surpasses its initial capacity and a lot of students have to repeat.
“The system is already stretched and will only be worse when repeating students are added to the number.”
His argument follows the wanton destruction carried out on four major schools by protesting college students.
The Isale Oyo community high school, Oba Adeyemi High school, Araromi, both in Oyo town, Ibadan, were among those that had been burnt down to ashes.
Eye witness accounts said that the protest was a result of what the students regarded as “high level of failure” which would hinder majority of them from being promoted to the next level.
Mr Ojo said the issue of mass failure, “has always been in existence for as long as God knows when, however, it has always been masked with some sort of automatic promotion for everybody”.
Over the burning of school property, he said the government had seen the event coming, but decided to ‘play the ostrich’ by ignoring the issues.
He said teachers as well as parents have not actually sat down to unravel the problem which he says is not far-fetched.
Highlighting other problems involved in the education sector, he said the average School Principle today, is likely to enroll their children in Private schools even while working in a government school.
This according to him already shows that there are problems in the system, which nobody (the government), has sought to address.
Describing the system as barbaric, he however condoned the actions of the students saying that no matter what may have gone wrong, they shouldn’t have gone to that extent.