Addressing Kaduna State’s Education Sector Decay

Stakeholders in the education sector of Kaduna State held various fora last month to examine ways of addressing the rot in the state’s education system.

Governor  Ramalan Yero’s declaration of education as one of his priority sectors prompted the convening of the various summits.

The Chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Mr Ishaya Akau, stressed that the aim of the summits was to bring stakeholders together to brainstorm on how to overhaul the sector.

“We felt that if we could realise that there was a problem; that will be the first step to solving it.

“What we also want is to define that problem clearly and set the platform for the needed synergy to address the deficiencies in the system,’’ he said.

The participants of the summits stressed that the decay indices were quite enormous, just as  a former Chairman of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Idris Abubakar, noted that many secondary school graduates could neither read nor write well.

The Chairman, Kaduna State House of Assembly Committee on Education, Alhaji Umar Mohammed, whose committee was mandated to inspect some selected schools in 2011, said that “about half of the teachers in the primary and secondary schools are not qualified to teach.’’

He lamented that many teachers no longer wrote lesson notes, while others did not just know how to write such notes.

The decay in the quality of teaching could be illustrated via a development last year when SUBEB set a test for Primary Four teachers, in which 75 per cent of them failed.

Besides, SUBEB records also indicate that over half of the 1.2 million pupils of the state’s primary schools had no classes nor seats: They sit under tree shades.

The summits’ participants were also informed that teachers were never trained, even when one per cent of their salaries was deducted every month for that purpose.

Beyond that, Akau said that there was no professional requirement for anyone to become an Education Secretary in the local government areas.

“The most puzzling is a situation where teachers on GL 06 are appointed headmasters to lead senior colleagues, some of them on GL14. This is not good for teachers’ morale.

“We have also discovered that those who are not qualified are teaching, while those qualified are not given the job.

“Again, neither teachers nor students have any textbook, while very few teachers seem to know that they should have benchmarks or syllabus,’’ he said.

All the same, the Commissioner for Education, Alhaji Mohammed Usman, stressed that plans to attain quality education would remain a mirage without the availability of quality teachers.

“You cannot have good education without good teachers, while a good teacher should have the passion to motivate others to learn.

“That is no longer the situation. That good teacher of yore has been replaced by a ghost, absentee and unqualified teacher,’’ he said.

However, Akau said that the quality of education remained low because unlike in advanced countries where students spent 900 hours in class per term, the average period spent in class in the country “is just about 400 hours’’.

He stressed that the 75 per cent mandatory attendance was not being achieved in Nigeria.

“There are too many holidays. There are too many ceremonies such as weddings, birthdays, funerals, send-forth parties and many others; we always insist on attending these ceremonies and taking the children along,’’ Akau noted.

Nevertheless, participants at the fora agreed that the quality of education was still relative high in the South-West geopolitical zone.

They said that successive leaders in the region sustained the heavy investments made in the education sector by  former Premier of the defunct Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

They argued that in contrast, successive leaders in the North failed to continue from where the late Sardauna of Sokoto, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, stopped.

“That is why we are here. Education is capital intensive, so we must invest heavily in it.

“Agreed that other sectors are competing for limited resources but education must be given priority because its growth has a domino effect on other sectors,’’ an official of the Parents Teachers Association (PTA),  Malam Adamu Shika, said.

The Provost, College of Education, Gidan Waya, Mrs Hope Gajere, identified the seeming apathy of most students toward taking up a career in teaching as one of the factors impeding the growth of the education sector.

“Students do not choose the colleges of education as their first choice; they only come if they cannot get university admission.

“We give admissions but less than half of those offered admission come to register. Some start the NCE programme and leave halfway once they get university admission.

“We have also observed that some people come in with fantastic WAEC and NECO results but cannot justify such grades. Such results are apparently from ‘miracle centres’,’’ she said.

All the same,  the Speaker, Kaduna State House of Assembly, Alhaji Muazu Gangara, assured the people that the legislature would make good laws which would enhance the quality of education.

He said that the passage of the Education Quality Assurance Bill was aimed at boosting the quality of education in the state.

Gangara urged Governor Yero to declare an emergency in the educational sector so as to save it from total collapse.

The speaker re-echoed the participants’ concern that most primary and secondary schools in the state were facing serious challenges which required special attention.

Hajia Rakiya Musa, who chairs the Governing Council of Kaduna State College of Education, Gidan Waya, also underscored the need to give special attention to the development of primary education and the training of teachers.

“In our days, we were anxious to learn but now, we have to beg our children to go to school. We must take primary education even more seriously because that is where everything starts. Once a child misses it at that point, he or she is lost,’’ she said.

The education commissioner, however, pledged the government’s determination to ensure quality education, adding that 3,800 unqualified teachers had been sacked.

Usman said that those teachers who survived the purge were given a five-year deadline to obtain the minimum teaching qualifications.

He stressed that the inspectorate division of the ministry of education would be further fortified to ensure effective monitoring of schools.

“SUBEB has also developed a comprehensive lesson plan document to ease the work of teachers and set benchmarks which pupils must attain at specific levels.

“We expect teachers to implement the scheme and use it to assess themselves, while parents should similarly use it to test the progress of their children or wards,’’ Usman said.

All in all, experts believe that if the recommendations of the summits are faithfully implemented by the government and other stakeholders, the quality of education in Kaduna State will soon experience a remarkable improvement.

Sheyin writes for News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)

Ephraims Sheyin