IT did not start today. It has been happening for years. But the mass failure in this year’s May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) seemed to touch a raw nerve in many. The cry, nationwide, is why this kind of result again?
About 529,425 (31.28 per cent) of the 1,692,435 candidates that sat for the examination made five credits, including Mathematics and English
Although the West African Examinaions Council (WAEC) claimed Nigerian candidates did better than their counterparts in the sub-region, many believe that the 31.28 per cent pass is nothing to crow about.
The figure is a slight decline from the 36.57 per cent and 38.81 per cent recorded in 2013 and 2012.
WAEC Head of National Office (HNO), Mr Charles Eguridu absolved all tiers of government of blame, saying parents are culpable for their children’s performance.
Members of the House of Representatives Committee on Education are worried over the development. They have vowed to “engage WAEC authorities for an explanation to Nigerians on the abysmal performance of candidates in the examination.”
The committee’s Chairman Aminu Suleiman, said he hoped that through such interaction, the committee would know where the problems lie rather than blaming WAEC.
Speaking last week when the committee visited the National Universities Commission (NUC) as part of its oversight function, he said reversing the perennial failure required concerted efforts.
Said Suleiman: “Well, it’s quite unfortunate. Incidentally, we will be visiting WAEC and it will form part of our engagement with the body. But I want to believe that WAEC should not be held solely responsible for this.
“We wish to go and interact with them (WAEC) and hear from them what is actually responsible for this alarming rate of failure, which was put at about 38 per cent in a percentage of a 100. It is disturbing and totally unacceptable in a country like Nigeria.
“Whatever it takes, we will do the little we can as government and I believe government has done the best it could; but if there are areas we need to hold government accountable, we will encourage government to do, but where it is the responsibility of those who have to be in charge of the process, we will look at that.”
But, Eguridu is optimistic, hinging his optimism on the fact that Nigerian candidates performed better than others in the West African examination.
He said: “Nigerians performed very well comparatively to candidates, especially in Mathematics.” But many Nigerians are not impressed with his submissions.
Majority of parents, teachers, and other opinion moulders nationwide described the May/June WASCCE as a sign of rot in education. They blamed the mass failure on pupils’ addiction to the internet, laziness, pupils and parents’ culpability in examination fraud, teachers indifference to work, poor teaching methodology, poor teachers motivation and government’s unwillingness to address the problem among others.
To Chikere Ordu, a Mathematics teacher at Omuagwa Community Secondary School, Rivers State, technology and other social interactive sites constitute part of the problem.
Ordu believes that teachers should share less of the blame as their work is to ensure that pupils acquire basic knowledge of the subjects they will take during examination.
”Look, in a situation where teachers cry like babies before they receive their salaries, a situation where the government has failed on their own way to provide the necessary teaching aid, then what would you expect of WASSCE result? We need to go back to the drawing board,” Ordu said.
School owners, according to her, also have a key role to play.
“I think teachers have done their best by ensuring that they play their role as teachers; it is now left for school owners or managers to provide the enabling environment, because you cannot expect good result or good performance from students if the environment is not conducive.”
Mrs. Godknows Ogbulu, Head of Education Desk, Tide said the rot in the education and teachers’ attitude, especially in public schools, may have compounded the WASSCE results.
”How many teachers in public schools are ready to teach nowadays?” Mrs Ogbulu asked.
She added: “Everybody wants to make money without working for it. Teachers are the ones to rouse the children from examination failure, but they are relaxing. Today, a student, who wants to write WASSCE and pass, pays a certain amount of money. As a result, teachers feel it is unnecessary to labour much in imparting knowledge to students.”
A teacher at the Adeyemi College of Education (ACE), in Ondo, Dr. Zaccheaus Olupayimo, believes everybody is culpable.
Olupayimo, who is the Head of Department of History, told The Nation that the implication of the result is that it could kill the dreams of students who hope to use same for admission into tertiary institutions in the 2014/2015 academic session.
He identified poor infrastructure in public schools and government’s inconsistent policies as two factors largely responsible for the candidates’ dismal performance. Olupayimo expressed concern over the attitude of some parents towards their children education.
He urged stakeholders to join the fight against mass failure, saying the government should redouble its efforts at providing infrastructure and decent learning environment.
A school principal in Akure, the Ondo State capital, who spoke in confidence, accused students of unseriousness.
According to him, with the coming of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), most students devote more time to frivolities.
He tasked parents to monitor their children and ensure they attend to their studies, especially when preparing for major examinations.
Proprietor of Adeyemo College in Kaduna, Mr. Niyi Adeyemo, argued for more funding of education by the government. He said:
“From my experience, education is capital intensive and any government that is not able to spend as much as is required will not be able to get the right result. The attention that is being given to education differs from school to school; some give little attention and want to achieve much and when you aggregate the intellect of these children you find that a larger percentage of children, today, do not have the skills that is required of them when you talk of education.
“When you look at education, the level of demand of an average child in the modern world is far more than what it was in the past. So, the rate of development is slower than what it ought to be. That is why our children find it difficult to meet the capacity of the global world. That is what is perceived as low quality of education, and responsible for the mass failure.”
Adeyemo berated schools, which tax their pupils’ parents in order to pass examination.
“For God’s sake, where are we going? They (schools) use the money to bribe supervisors and hire instructors that will help them write answers on the board. A student that is supposed to sit down and write with his own ideas will only be copying answers from the board. But, as God will catch them, some of the instructors they hire cannot even interpret questions correctly; and that is why you see mass failure.”
Adeyemo implored government to resuscitate the Inspectorate Department of the Ministry of Education and employ people with sound experience to inspect government and private schools.
“When you talk of examination malpractice, it starts from inspection. Who inspected those schools that are cheating? Who gave them approval? And how many teachers do you see there that are qualified?” he asked.
“So, the government must go back to the old days and bring back the inspectorate team that has the fear of God to visit both public and private schools unawares, and any school found wanting should be dealt with. If government can start from here, some sanity can be put in place for a start,” Adeyemo stressed.
A parent and journalist, Alhaji Tajudeen Tijani Ajibade’s argued that military’s incursion into politics started the prevailing education challenges.
“Unfortunately, the civilian government has followed that (military) direction. Education is not the priority of those in government, today. That was the mindset of the military in those harrowing years. For example, when Prof Rukayyat Rufai (immediate past minister of Education) was in the saddle, she did well. Suddenly, Mr. President woke up one day and replaced her with another person, a politician, who was busy fighting perceived enemies while the ministry under him suffered.
“Now, we have a teacher, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, as education minister. But, even at that, the circumstance that brought him up appeared to be more political than purely merit. There are people who can be better ministers outside the party. You can play politics with many other ministries, but not education,” said Ajibade.
He expressed concern over the high coast of WAEC scratch cards. Parents, who have to pay N9000 to enrol their children, will definitely want them to make their papers at a sitting.
“You can even imagine how much they (pupils) buy WAEC scratch cards. I wrote the first West African Exam in 1967 and what we paid then was seven shillings and six pence. Today, it takes a rich family to enrol its children in these examinations.”
He stressed the need for the government to go back to the drawing board. “Those who gave education to people like us did it with their whole heart. Today, a teacher doesn’t get his salary when it is due; even when he gets it, how much is the salary? So, he comes to the class and just marks register and goes out to sell his goods. “We must also recruit professionals as teachers and pay them good salaries, because they are also aware of what other people are receiving outside,” Ajibade said.
An SS 1 pupil in Zamani College, Kaduna, Muhammad Thanni, said poor facilities in most schools affect examination success.
“I am not surprised with the outcome of the WASSCE, because most of the things we have done at junior level in my school, others have not done it at senior level. In most cases, if you enquire further, you will find out that, most schools, especially government-owned ones, don’t even have the type of facilities we have. So, the implication is that, they will not do things that they ought to do with those facilities,” he said.
Mr Bob Utsu, a teacher in Community Secondary School, Akpabuyo, said: “It is a very worrisome development, indeed. One of the reasons is the pupils’ attitude towards examinations. Pupils believe so much in the fact that, most times, the WAEC questions leak online. So, in the event that those things are not there or a fake, as they mostly are, they feel frustrated and fail as a result.
“Again lack of facilities in the school is another problem. Teachers don’t have a conducive environment where they can stay and do their job effectively. Like in the school I teach, we don’t even have a staff room, not to talk of chairs for teachers to sit on.”
Utsu added: “Parents also have a stake. Many parents pursue money at the expense of their children’s education. They don’t even bother to look at their children’s books to see their performance; or whether they actually went to school or not. When they come from work, they are tired and have no time for their kids. “
Another parent, Mr Tony Unor, said: “We cannot attribute it (examination failure) to only the teachers. Parents, the school and government are all involved. When a teacher is done in school and the child comes back home, he or she is supposed to revise what was taught. But what you find now is that they are browsing irrelevant things on the internet or playing video games and their parents often look the other way.
“Also the government has a role, too. If you go to some schools, you see students still sitting on the bare floor in this 21st century; so, how do you expect that kind of student to learn very well? The government too must ensure proper infrastructure are in place.”
David Iso, a school principal in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, is also angry that parents approach teachers or school management on how to bend the rules with respect to examinations.
“It is really very bad. I would like to place the first blame on parents and this is because, as a principal, I cannot count how many times parents have come to me to see how their children can be assisted to pass examinations. But I always tell them the only way is for their children to study and write their papers and pass. What this means is that the children are not in any way prepared to write their examination. So, when you see outcomes such as this (mass failure), I am not really surprised. How can parents discourage their children from reading in such a manner?
“The students themselves are no longer studious. I don’t know how; but somehow they have come to get this belief that there is really no need to ‘punish’ themselves by studying for the examination, when answers can be made available to them through dubious means. They just keep money to get answers to the questions; and, more often than not, this fails them. How are they even sure the solutions to the questions given them are even real? I often wonder,” Iso said.
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