The state of Nigeria’s education system according to statistics, Nigeria has one of Africa’s largest education systems with over 66 million children enrolled in schools as of 2022.
But earlier this year UNICEF said, Nigeria had the world’s largest population of out-of-school children at 18.3 million between the ages of 5 and 14.
Our country Nigeria has faced remarkable challenges including socioeconomic factors and Geographic disparities, this alarming statistic reflects systemic issues in Nigeria such as poverty conflict and even cultural barriers to education.
We’re going to unravel this discussion around Nigeria’s education system with us Dr Joy Isa she’s the education consultant and the president of the Isa School of Education.
Talked about the quality of Education in the country which has increasingly come under scrutiny, the recent assessments indicate a disconcerting Trend in learning outcomes. A recent World Bank report highlights that about 70% of children between the ages of 10 and above are classified as learning poor, meaning they cannot read or comprehend Simple Text.
The national assessment of learning outcomes suggests that only 35% of primary school students meet minimum proficiency levels in literacy and numeracy revealing a significant deficit in foundational learning.
There’s a lot of focus in Nigeria and a lot of money we see seemingly going toward education, but there are questions about the foundational years.
What are the current challenges Nigeria faces in ensuring high-quality education, especially in public schools during these foundational very important years?
Dr. Joy isa said that the biggest problem is that we don’t have a national curriculum for early years, and by early years we mean ages 0 to 5, there is no published curriculum for early years.
It’s open season, and teachers, School leaders, and educators go with the flow, a couple of private schools have adopted curricula from the diaspora.
The early year’s curriculum, and the montis curriculum, but where is the Nigerian curriculum for nursery school, for reception, unfortunately, we don’t have one published.
So that opportunity to build your foundational literacy and numeracy skills is missing, when these young children go into Primary School, they’re expected to be able to have a certain measure of literacy and numeracy skills, computational reasoning, the basic sounds phonics.
In our public schools, these have to be taught from primary one which is between ages 5 and 6 in the public school system, these children have learned all these skills and so they have advanced, so that’s a fundamental issue, we need to align, we need something published by the government saying this is the standard for children between the ages of zero to five.
Some countries have curricula for ages three to five, one year in Nursery 3 to 4, one year in reception which is primary, and four to five, but that is a big problem. She said.
The fact that the curriculum is being considered for children under five years old is a serious issue because many Nigerians, particularly those working in the education sector, mistakenly believe that Montori is only for play. Does it work like that?
According to Dr. Isa, the Montis method was developed to support age-typical children who are not learning as regularly and are typically developing children.
if you read through the history Maria Montori noticed that some children were thriving in traditional classrooms while some were not. How do we support these children to be able to access these ABCs as said, the alphabet, the numbers, and basic addition, she developed the strategy to say instead of Children Learning in abstraction, just counting numbers or just saying this is one, two or three, can we give the children manipulatives to use so the learning is more concrete.
Dr. Joy adds the fact that we’re building a tower, let me give a simple example, so say you want to survey the class and you want children’s favorite food, who likes garri, who likes jello rice, who likes plantain, or just drawing on a piece of paper, you build the bar chart against the wall and put the word you know you can put a bowl of picture garri, picture of rice and children go and stack it. The blocks and build, the bar graph becomes visual, becomes concrete, and then when the children have to read it in a textbook, look at it, you can imagine at a foundational level, that’s numeracy that’s data handling.
If you take them to statistics and statistical analysis, they have a solid Foundation, and their conceptual understanding is deep because they supposedly played. Dr Joy added.
News Central reports that in August of this year after 12 years of curriculum review, the federal government said there is no going back in delivering to Nigerians a reviewed curriculum for its basic and Senior secondary schools which is aimed at addressing the current learning crisis in the country. And the encouragement of the use of more technology, Ministry of Education Professor Tahir Mamma said reports have shown that out of our four children in Nigeria, at least one of them suffers poor numeracy level, poor learning level, and poor critical thinking level.
Before reviewing the curriculum, I think it’s very important to highlight the impact of the country from a poor educational system, because looking at all these things that they said they are deficient is the root cause of it, not the poor education system, they cannot give back what they were not taught.
How do you want to address this assertion made by the minister of education and, how do we as a society then get impacted and affected as these individuals continue to grow yet the foundation is faulty?
Dr. Isa maintains that ‘‘we cannot give what we don’t have, if in our NCEs, in our Bachelor of Education program, our curriculum content does not include critical thinking, does not include a transition, the problem is enormous honestly.
I’ve run so many webinars, and so many training sessions and you find teachers don’t understand why they shouldn’t be giving children notes to copy, they should be promoting note taking, promoting critical thinking.
They want to do all that synthesis of information and then write it on the blackboard, whiteboard, or digital board, which is still a board, and then children copy their notes.
Where is the opportunity for the children to think, where is the opportunity for them to process information from different points and then synthesize it in their minds and then answer a question, that is the cause part of the problems of exam malpractices in Wace and in some of the other big exams, you haven’t given me enough time to think and practice it, then all of a sudden, I should answer these big questions in exam.
We need to go back to initial teacher training, and the content of our teacher training, it is good to update the curriculum and include history, we’re looking forward to seeing that updated curriculum and seeing whether history is now all the way to lower basic and not just in secondary school.
You’ll be astonished to see that the NCE curriculum has not been updated, but we must return to what the teachers were taught in the past’’
When was the last time the teacher’s curriculum was upgraded?
NCE was established many years ago, I think the first school, because we’ve done a lot of research on the history of the evolution, let’s call it education in Nigeria and you have to go back to to1878, when the first schools were established that led to University of Ibadan, being established in 1948 to drive educational institutions in Nigeria, because when Nigeria North and South were put together, there was a need for north and south to come together. After all, West was ahead.
The schools were put together what’s it called Universal basic education, and that whole 6334 system was finally established in 1984.
The question is who is coming to teach this curriculum, do they have instructional strategies, has the teachers’ curriculum been updated, and we don’t see the match, I’m part of the Faculty of a privately owned NCE, but there’s a dichotomy of practices because we are still required to teach teachers to be the center of attention. They are the owners of the learning, and the minister is telling us to use technology, we’re not taught to use technology in our NCE, or our colleges of education how can we share what we don’t have? Dr Joy adds.
The correspondence of News Central asks, what the criteria and the Basis for being a teacher, are there’s another angle to this question, the UBE ACT was reinstated in 2024, but it was an offshoot of the Up Act under Obasanjo, where children were supposed to get free education for the first nine years, six years of their primary, three years of their junior secondary, to ensure that people went to school and then teachers were trained to teach these children in schools.
But it looks like it was never implemented, it is obviously because of poor infrastructure, lack of teachers, etc.
It feels like laws are passed, and policies are put in place, but there isn’t anything to ensure they are implemented and there isn’t any fallout or any impact of it not being implemented.?
Dr. Isa says what is happening in the education sector, is it’s not even a microcosm, it’s a picture or a snapshot of what is happening in every sector.
Where we do not have Regulators to enforce the laws, and the decrees on what has been agreed, this is the result, the learning loss and inconsistent standards.
NCE was established in the 1990s and a lot of conversation supposedly went on before that with the Ministry of Education, the Ashb report of 1959.
NCE was established, but who is assuring the quality of these accredited colleges of Education? Last year there were over 200 accredited colleges of education awarding teaching qualifications.
Now to teach in a primary school in Nigeria, you don’t need a degree, finish your secondary school then you do your NCE training which is about three years and then you are qualified to teach in a primary school, that sounds good until you probe a bit deeper and see that a lot of the people who end up in NCE are those who didn’t get their degree of choice, because they didn’t have the math or English credits.
In certain parts of the country, you can get away with this, where you can get admitted into your NCE program with five credits or maybe you don’t have either math or English, but I was allowed to remediate it, go through your NCE do math education or English, then go into a university because with an NCE you can go and do a b.Ed program.
By going to do a b.ED, in any of the Nigerian universities, and the person comes out and says I’m a teacher and then goes to XYZ International School and says you can employ me, I’m qualified to teach.
According to a News Central reporter, the minister announced in July that a new curriculum would kick off in September for basic and Education and secondary school curriculum, let’s see if that has taken off and your thoughts on it.
How easy it seems for people to get into NCE and somehow find themselves teaching pupils across Nigeria, and why people are not making the circular connection that when the criteria of the teachers are bad, there’s no way we’re not going to have the learning outcomes that we’ve been discussing a deficiency in numeracy in literacy.
The Minister of Education Professor Tahir Maman in July at the 2024 policy meeting organized by The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board said that there would be a new curriculum kicking off for secondary schools in September, has that curriculum kicked off, What’s in it? What did we remove? What did we add? How does it look?
Dr joy added that the new curriculum is not published on the NDC website, unfortunately, it’s not there at the time check looking through it, because NERDC is the custodian of the curriculum, it is not updated yet, but having said that though it does take up to two years to establish curriculum reform everywhere in the world when you introduce curricular you have to share the documentation with the stakeholders and then the trial is you have a two-year window to implement the curriculum.
In our nation a lot of us are still very analog in terms of the fact that we do a lot of paper-based and, so we do need to give the government time to implement it.
However, that curriculum should have been available online by now.
Reviewing Nigeria’s Education Curriculum
What do we need, we’re looking at Nigeria’s basic education setup. What do we need to bring it up to part, what do we need, because we’re in the fourth Industrial Revolution, where we’re supposed to be in the internet days and we’re still following Paper Trails.
Even though research has progressed beyond simply copying information from textbooks into a notepad, some teachers continue to write analog notes or teacher’s notes.
Which criteria must they meet?
Dr. Joy isa states that the curriculum itself can help us, especially Nigerians in more rural communities, it can provide us with the leverage, we need, and can give us an adequate level of literacy and numeracy skills if our teachers can deliver the curriculum as it is, unfortunately, our teachers have low literacy and numeracy skills themselves.
In 2015 when the Kaduna state Governor at the time, got teachers to do an exam there was a whole lot and said he was going to fire all of them, and there was so much pushback. The fact is that if every state does this, we will have the same issue.
we find it difficult to employ graduates to become
teachers, because we can give you the skills, we can say this is how to teach, this is how not to teach, but where your basic literacy numeracy critical thinking skills are deficient, how do we employ you to work in our schools, it’s a problem, so the problem starts with the teachers, we said children are a recalcitrant, where are their parents, we say children don’t know what to do in school, where are their teachers.
We are the problem that is why a lot of us keep going abroad to get better quality education.
Nowadays the more people go abroad the more they stay abroad, they don’t come back. Dr. Isa adds.
In the Nigerian school system and all over the world, here in Nigeria, millions of people sit for the UTM exams, and every year not more than 20% of the candidates who sit for the exams get admission into these institutions, not because they might not have passed, but because there’s not enough space there’s, there isn’t enough infrastructural provision for the number of students that have been trained for 9 years of their lives to write these exams.
What is the alternative for people who have been trained all their lives to write College exams and not get into college because there isn’t any space for them, what do they now do with themselves, they wait a few years to write the exams the next year, try and hope they make it in the next year, and then you have a bunch of people who are frustrated, they’re getting older, they become useless to themselves and the society.
Why is all our focus on the tertiary institutions when there’s not enough?
Dr. Isa says we used to have these Technical and Vocational centers, our polytechnics, they were thriving because everyone understood that you don’t have to go to university for the white color jobs, you went to polytechnics and vocational centers to gain the skills you needed to become an entrepreneur, to become an independent citizen.
Nowadays, we have so undervalued and blacklisted the polytechnics and these vocational centers.
It would probably be better to go to an accredited Vocational Center to become a skilled Carpenter or plumber.
And many people who are into building properties keep saying please I want plumbers from Togo and Benin because they’re better and skilled.
Why can’t we keep promoting these skills and is now a societal stigma, unfortunately, the more we talk about it, perhaps we can change the narrative, say I’m a proud plumber and you have to pay me a premium because I provide premium Services.
That’s a whole cultural change that will take a while to establish but we need more public-private partnerships.
News Central reports that education is not just a teacher conversation, it’s a money conversation as well, even though UNESCO recommends a 26% Benchmark for educational budgets in underdeveloped countries like Nigeria.
In the past 10 years or more Nigerian governments have allocated just an average of 5 to 8% of their budgets to education which is not getting us anywhere.
Are we a nation that takes education seriously, and does the president’s private sector need to be given more influence over our educational system in light of budgetary constraints or lack thereof? Nigeria’s government seems to frequently be shirking its duty to involve the private sector to carry out its proper obligations.
According to Dr. Isa, the government alone cannot educate our populace, about 50% of Nigerians are under the age of 18, so the government cannot meet that need, and so we do need to go cap in hand, we need the public-private Partnerships and, we don’t need window dressing Partnerships, we need authentic Partnerships.
For example, MTN has a foundation and all of that is great, but you need technical experts in the field, you need people who can be computer analysts and data analysts.
MTN can you partner with an existing University, to own that department, and say okay you will provide subsidies, sponsorships for everyone in that department, for people to be able to get certified, for people to be able to take that course, and then they have to intern with you and, the most successful can work with you, can absorb as many as you can, and others are empowered to make a difference in any sector.
So we need more authentic ppp’s where it is not window dressing, but a long-term investment.
More developed Nations don’t spend so much on education if you check, the UK, for example, spends about 4 to 5% of their budget on education, when you see the amount of money, you can understand why, we have a long way to go, and we need to catch up, which is why UNICEF is targeting the 20s so that you can invest and catch up. We need to partner with the private sector because the government cannot do it alone.
News Central reports that UNICEF says that our out-of-school children now number 18.3 million children, between the ages of 5 and 14, and a report from Abakaliki in Ebonyi State where there has been low turnout of students for the new term, the report has it that parents blame the harsh economy, the rise in the cost of living and more.
What typically happens to education goals in times like this, when parents have to prioritize feeding and housing one child over another, depending on the number of children in the family?
What happens to our children, would these statistics not be climbing higher?
Dr Isa maintains that the stats will increase and there will be a learning loss, so as a nation, we will experience further learning loss, to what we experienced during COVID-19.
Worldwide there’s a learning loss, and all the Educators were encouraged to use data to check the students’ Gap maybe from 2000 to 2002, how the children have performed and then compare that with previous years and compare that with your curriculum outcomes.
There’s a major learning loss and everybody is trying to catch up, this will compound the issue because take for example, a student who is the first, now has to be at home, maybe a term or two until the parents can reset and reorganize their finances, and the other two are going to school. The other two may go to school hungry a couple of times, so the learning is not as impactful because nobody learns when hungry.
We will have learning loss across the board at multiple levels and our challenges will be further compounded, it is important instead of giving out these Palatives, we feed the children in school because, if you establish a feeding program, then, of course, the parent of the student will send the child to school, because they know the child will at least eat in school, the child will have one solid meal done.
If all the schools have feeding programs to help at this time, then we’ll have more children in school as opposed to reduced numbers.
THE SCHOOL FEEDING PROGRAM
The school feeding program in the last Administration, the Buhari administration said they fed a lot of children, there was evidence of some schools receiving feeding, and it hasn’t continued.
In developed countries children are fed in schools, to keep them in school, it is a basic need. Where we advocate for basic education from primary to junior secondary, feeding should be an integral part of the process.
It’s as important as infrastructural development allocating technology, let’s give the children one meal every day. They will come to school. Dr joy is added.
The Negative Effects Of Students Staying At Home During School Hours
These days, parents are making decisions about which child to send to school, who stays at home and for how long, and whether to send their kids to school hungry. This is because hungry kids are easily distracted, they are not like adults, and you cannot make them fast; they won’t pay attention.
Let us also consider what happens to children who are left at home while their parents go out to hustle. For girls, this may mean an increase in adolescent pregnancies, while for boys, it may mean a risk of involvement in crime.
The fact that parents must choose whether or not to send their children to school has a greater impact on child labor.
How can such children be creative thinkers and process what they learn?
The ability to analyze information from one point to a logical conclusion is not taught to people.
There will always be exams I’ll practice because it is crammed and pasted.
The product of a public education outside of the country and free school feeding, helped to keep them in school.
We’re not trying to reinvent the will, other people have done it, why has school feeding in Nigeria stopped, we know there was controversy around how much was being spent and what the kids were getting.
Professor Tahir Mamma has said that September a new curriculum is going to start but as of today, 23 September is not available on the website.
They can’t just keep making big pronouncements about updating and changing policies while the actual work remains unsolved.
Why won’t we have the learning outcomes that we have, why won’t the World Bank come and tell us that our children are learning deficient, then you find out that people have gone to school but they don’t have an understanding of Applied knowledge, so they cannot apply.
Our teachers need better training, we can’t just look at people who couldn’t make it to University and manage to throw them in and imagine.
When someone who completed their NCE education trains your children, we are setting them up for failure.