Education System: Chidoka decries certificate obsession, poor planning

…says Education is a subject after his heart

Former Minister of Aviation, Chief Osita Chidoka has blamed consistent decline in the education system in the country to paper qualification obsession and persistent lack of long-term strategic planning.

He said the absence of practical learning and focus on outputs in the nation’s education system now became a paper qualification chasing exercise. 

Quoting John U Nwalor, Chidoka argued that the failure of our educational reforms had made Nigerians obsessed with paper qualifications rather than the outcomes and results that should emerge from such qualifications. 

He regretted that education was no longer seen as a means for the constructive development of society but rather as the means to a larger share of the wealth of the nation – the same sentiments that ruled in national politics then and particularly still rules today, giving birth and prominence to issues and measures associated with distrust and inequity.

Taking to his social media handle, the former Minister said Education is a subject after his heart, and it is the most potent tool against poverty, disease and ignorance.

He said “Following my post on the 2020 JAMB results and the state of education in Nigeria and the South East many asked me the important question “what is to be done”. Over the next few days I will share some of my thoughts about the trouble with our educational system, lessons from around the world and some action-oriented solutions.

“The declining performance of government owned schools at primary and secondary levels and rise in private school has created a new apartheid system in Nigeria. The growing dichotomy rears its head along rural/urban based schools, public/private schools, high cost/low cost schools and widening regional disparity between the Northern/Southern based schools. 

“These growing disparities if not checked will create the next wave of social discontent when those whose futures are diminished by reason of their economic or geographic location at birth are denied access to quality education and its attendant economic opportunities. 

“Our educational system has suffered from persistent lack of long-term strategic planning. Scant regards to long term strategic planning in Nigeria for example affected the Universal Primary Education (UPE). On the launching of UPE in 1976, three million children showed up as against 2.3 million originally planned for, representing a 30 percent underestimation. 

“This has implications for classroom spaces, teachers, and equipment (Akpa 1988). Till date, we have no verifiable data, from government, of projections on the growth of education consumption as population grows or the teacher requirement for this growth.

According to the former Corps Marshal, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), the introduction of the 6-3-3-4 system created the junior secondary school which was designed to make the youth employable through vocational skill acquisition could not achieve its goal due to poor implementation. 

“For instance, while Government purchased cheaper technological products from European markets, these products became redundant due to poor power supply and lack of requisite skills for the teachers to operate the machines. 

“Consequently, the pre-vocational subjects which were meant to launch Nigeria into a respectable industrialized state with abundant pool of lower level manpower became an illusion with the subjects such as introductory technology being taught theoretically as English Language,” he added.

Chidoka further regretted the collapse of Education Inspectorate Service, which he said contributed to the relegation of the service of the Inspectorate Services who were the quality control watchdog in the education sector to limbo. 

He added, “No educational programme can function effectively without a quality inspectorate service. The concept of inspection has now been changed to supervision. According to Bello Umar Gusau (2008), the change is necessitated by the perception of school inspectors as no less than police inspectors with a colonial mentality. 

“He further stressed that this was because of their perception as enforcers of discipline, and whose presence in a school was both fearsome and awesome to schoolteachers and administrators.

“The inability to create national benchmark for academic performance to enable rating of schools and teachers has created the sad situation of lack of accountability and focus on consistent performance. We need to rate schools to induce empirical and quantifiable outcomes.

“The educational sector, since the government takeover of schools, degenerated into a cesspool of corruption. By a back of the envelope analysis only about 45k to 75k on the naira of budgeted amount gets to the schools. 

“The absence of data on the actual cost of education per student and lack of visibility on spending on infrastructure, teacher training and school administration creates the opportunity for the endemic corruption. The lack of accountability and centralization of spending at the various ministries of education creates the incentive for the pillaging of education resources.

“The rigidity in curriculum development and management deprives schools and local authorities the autonomy critical in the transfer of knowledge. The military induced unitary system of our political system is holding our educational system in a vice grip and needs to be loosened.”