The Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) says poor reading culture by students, poor remunerations to teachers and like warm attitude of parents towards their children’s and ward’s education are the causes of mass failure in school certificate examinations.

This was contained in a communiqué issued recently at the end of the NUT’s 55th delegates conference held at Asaba, the Delta State capital.

While calling on government and all education authorities to do everything possible to tackle this problem of students’ mass failure in school certificate examinations”, the communiqué also identified key problems in the country’s education industry.

Such problems, the NUT said, include inadequate  funding, constant policy changes, poor working conditions and environment, and inadequate/poor infrastructures and instructional materials.

It also include poor management of available resources and “a host of others”.

The communiqué noted that “the numerous problems of education in Nigeria have continued to persist alongside “all their devastating effects on the system without any concerted effort by government to mitigate them.”

The communiqué also expressed worry over what it described as “the diminishing attention being given to education by successive governments in the country as clearly exhibited in the declining budgetary allocations to the sector by both federal and state governments.”

It this urged the executive of NUT to “place the problems of education in Nigeria on top of its agenda and explore all possible means of ensuring that education is accorded the proper attention it deserves by governments at all levels.

In another development, the National Programme Coordinator, Curriculum Development, Federal Ministry of Education, Professor Michael Adikwu, identified obsolete curriculum as a major reason for the poor performance of students at the post primary level.

Adikwu, who stated this during the opening ceremony of the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and Intel Corporation sponsored Sixth Nigeria Secondary Schools Science Fair and Quiz competition in Port Harcourt, disclosed that, “a recent study has shown that the problem of education in Nigeria is that of obsolete curriculum.”

He added that this is so because schools use out dated  curriculum in a technology –driven age and it has further pushed the students far behind in their development aspirations.

Professor Adikwu noted the non-adaptability of the existing curriculum to the 21st century developments in the education system, particularly in the context of teaching and learning, stressing that the pace of advancement in Science and Engineering in other countries has left most teachers and students behind in Nigeria.

Sogbeba Dokubo