It often seems amusing when I hear people complain about the abysmal performance of candidates in Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), West African School Certificate (WASC), National Examination Council (NECO) and other similar examinations across the country.

This is because anybody who has been following the trend in our education sector, should know and appreciate that there is an appalling fall in the standard of our education.

The result of entrance examination into the tertiary institutions across the country for 2012 released by JAMB a few days ago indicated that out of over 1.5 million candidates who sat for the examination, only three scored 300 and above, 72, 243 scored 250 and above, while 601, 151 got marks ranging from 200 to 249. In all only 673,397 scored above 200 which could enable them gain admission into universities.

In a similar way, the last year’s Novovember/December O’level results showed abysmal performance rate of about 70 percent failure.

Honestly, contrary to some people’s expression of disappointment over these results, I am not surprised at all.

As a matter of fact, I think these results are very impressive compared to the standard of education in the country and if something is not done urgently, we may be in for worse situations.

Records show that a particular school in Ghana has half of its population made up of Nigerian students. Many Nigerians today send their children and wards to different African countries, Europe, America and even Asia, in search of quality education, thereby enriching those countries.

But don’t be quick to condemn them. A tour of some public schools in the country would reveal complete the infrastructural decay.  What of the quality of teaching and instructional materials? Gone were the days when people took to teaching due to their love for the profession. Today, many people go into teaching due to unemployment or lack of better things to do. This is almost peculiar with private schools who employ people with any qualification and pay them meagerly. Stories have it that some school certificate holders, or even school drop-outs who were engaged by some private nursery schools are also used as nursery schools teachers.

In this case, you begin to wonder what those children were being taught. The fact that Half of the students who sat for a university entrance examination failed raises questions on the quality of teachers that prepared them for the examination.

Teachers may want to  accuse the students of laziness and for not taking their academic work seriously. They will blame students for spending most of their time on social networking, playing computer games and watching films. But the teachers can do better if they put more efforts and show more commitment, interest and zeal to their duties.

But then, it is impossible for one to give what he does not have. The quality of the teachers nowadays is becoming disturbing. A recent newspaper report has it that some school proprietors raised alarm over the poor quality of students coming out of higher institutions.

Indeed, the falling standard of education can be traced to so many factors. Education in Nigeria is poorly funded.

This has led to poor infrastructure, inadequate hostel accommodation for undergraduates, poor laboratory facilities and outdated teaching aids in the tertiary institutions. The direct results are the incessant strike actions by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), poor academic and research work which translate to chunning out of half-baked graduates.

In the past, pupils who did not perform well in examinations were asked to repeat some classes. Today, the situation is different.

Mass promotion is the new trend. Every proprietor wants to prove that his  pupils are the most brilliant; and to prove it, theyembarked on mass promotion even when some of them barely know their left from their rights

What of the parents? What are they doing towards ensuring that their children get quality education? Parents, particularly the fathers believe that having paid their children’s school fees, they have discharged their duties. Some parents don’t even care whether their children do their home work or not, or even take time to go through their school work. All their interest is in making money, believing that with money, their children can buy quality education.

That probably explain why some parents, especially mothers go the extent of buying question papers or machineries to write exams for their children. I wonder what the future of such children will be like.

Obviously, the problem of education sector in Nigeria is multi-faceted and it needs a multi-faceted effort to tackle it if we must achieve vision 20; 20; 20 we’re talking about. From the family up to the government, we all have a role to play. Unless we stop paying lip service to education, we will continue to have more failures.

It will amount to wishful thinking if parents think their children and wards will perform better in future examinations if they do not start now to pay attention to their academic works and guide them right.

Calista Ezeaku