Ensuring Better Access To Education

Patterson Koko

Each government is conscious of the importance and pivotal role played by education in the advancement of any society. It is for this reason that succeeding governments in Nigeria vote huge sums of money in their annual budgets to the sector.

Unfortunately,  these jumbo allocations do not really get to solve the problems of individuals’ schools.

Some public schools, especially in the rural areas, are nothing to write home about due to the poor and broken infrastructure in them. Public schools are no longer what they used to be in terms of quality and maintenance of infrastructure. In some of the schools children sit on the floor to learn while some others contend with ill-trained teachers.

The result of these is poor quality of education. This is why  the rich in the society now prefer to send their children to private schools where huge sums are paid as fees for a more qualitative education.

In fact, the situation is such that in some rural and city schools, two classes are combined in one as a result of lack of teachers. The qualified teachers  refuse to accept postings to rural areas. This leads to overcrowding of classrooms which makes learning difficult.

This is despite the fact that millions of children are not  in school because of poverty. Parents who are in this category often complain that though government gives the impression that education is free, there are  still certain demands that require large amount of money.

That is perhaps the reason why some poor parents who have great passion for education try by all means to give their children at least basic education to form the springboard from which they could succeed later in life. Those who lack this opportunity are those who constitute a larger percentage of the members of the society.

Some parents are known to engage their children in hawking of items after school or holidays in order to assist in generating funds for the payment of school fees not minding the  dangerous consequence.

Other parents also engage their children as househelps to those who can sponsor their education.

However, the free education programme introduced by the government is gradually reducing the househelp syndrome and positive changes are going on as some states now have laws prohibiting hawking by children.

Really the time has come for us to come together and work to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for free and compulsory basic education  throughout the  country and no investment should be considered too much for the development of our human capital. We can achieve this through proper planning.

In Rivers State and some other coastal states, education cannot reach some of the riverine communities and just like the nomad of the northern region, they are ­ considered disadvantaged children and efforts must be made to take education to such people.

There is need for some reforms to meet the numerous challenges to ensure basic education as a way of empowering the people.

The basic education we talk about in the primary and secondary level should be of high quality and should be complete with adequate materials and good infrastructure for learning.

Till date the free education we have is basically on paper and not in real terms because some low income earners still cannot cope with the demands. As intervention measure, the three tiers of government should seek means of  genuinely assisting indigent students, scholarships especially, at the tertiary level.

It is regrettable, that despite the huge investment on education, unqualified and uncommitted teachers as well as infrastructural decay, remain the bane of our educational system.