Arresting The Falling Standard Of Education

Education is the conscious training of the young
to a life useful to him/her and to the society to which he/she belongs.  Education provides the child opportunities to discover self and become useful and self reliant.
There are four stages of formal education  in Nigeria.  These include primary, secondary and tertiary education.  Regrettably, none of these stages is spared the rot that is plaguing education in Nigeria.
Having watched the falling standard of education in Nigeria for a while, I come to the conclusion as to what is responsible for it.  The truth is that, we are all guilty of the rot, even though the blame may not be proportionate .
The government is the most culpable in this respect.  It is the responsibility of the government to improve the standard of education, but the government has over the years proven to be a failure.
Successive administration pay lip service to education by giving the sector huge budgeting allocation without commensurable implementation.  We hear on yearly basis about mouth – watering budget allocated to education, yet the standard of education is falling without rescue.
Public schools are the worst for it. Teachers are seeing writing on bare walls, students sitting on bare floor and in dilapidated buildings.  Yet, the government is turning blind eye to this rot.
In many public schools, teachers’ dedication is  a scarce commodity due to low morale and lack of motivation.  Teachers’ salaries which were accorded top priority in the 1980s are now being owed in arrears of between four and six months.  The situation in the public school, to say the least, is pathetic and discouraging.
The situation in private schools is not different.  Private schools have been turned into money spinning venture as owners or proprietors do everything to make profit.  In many private schools, repeating a class is not an option.  Even when a child fails a promotional exam, he is promoted to the next class just to dissuade parents from withdrawing such a child from the school.
Again,  a large percentage of  teachers in private schools are unqualified.  All manners of persons are being recruited into teaching without cognate experience in teaching.  Worse and most saddening is the fact that some private schools permit holders of secondary school certificates who can barely express themselves in English language to teach.  This is horrifying.
Meanwhile, many teachers have neglected their roles as mentors.  The excuse they give for this neglect is lack of motivation and poor salaries.   But to be frank, not only teachers are underpaid or are not well motivated. The health sector is as bad as education, but nurses and doctors have not neglected  their roles in the hospital.
Lack of good parentage or guidance is another critical factor militating against quality of education in the country.  Some parents, rather than insisting on giving their children and wards quality education, resort to sorting out examiners for their children.  This is a dangerous trend that must be nipped in the bud.
The ease with which examination malpractice is carried out during external examination and the success associated with it  has made preparation for exams an unnecessary effort.  Gone were the days when examination malpractice was done in secret.  These days, it is an open affair. Many examination centres are notorious for exam malpractices such that at every point in time, those centres are sure of recording 90 percent success in every examination.  This phenomenon has created unseriousness among school children who throng those centres for external examinations.
These days, students spend more time on social media and watching television at the expense of studying.  It is a common feature seeing students with expensive phones and laptops with modern facilities.  In stead of using these facilities to improve on their education, they use them to entertain themselves or for other frivolous activities.
What then is the way out?  First, our educational facilities should be upgraded to modern standard while teaching facilities should be adequately provided.  More schools should be built to increase accessibility and teachers’ welfare should be given priority by government.  More qualified teachers should be employed to curb the present shortage of teachers in our schools, and performance should be regarded and respected more than just paper qualification.
Parents, teachers, government, examination bodies have a lot of roles to play in curbing the cancer that has held down the nation’s education sector. Until everyone does what it is expected of him or her, the nation’s  education may be heading towards total collapse.  God forbids!
Atagana is of the National Open University of Nigeria.

Josephine Atagan