Mass failure in WASSCE: Old problem, new challenges

The recently released results of the West Africa Examination Council, WAEC, Senior School Certificate Examination, SSCE, for May/June 2014 have generated an uproar across the country. The results showed that about 69 percent of the candidates who sat for the examination failed to get credit passes in five subjects including English Language and mathematics.

According to Charles Eguridu, Head of Nigeria National Office, WAEC, who announced the results, “a total of 529,425 candidates, representing 31.28%, obtained credits in five subjects and above, including English Language and Mathematics.”

Eguridu when comparing the 2014 results to that of 2012 and 2013 observed that there was a marginal decline in the performance of candidates as 38.81% was recorded in 2012 and 36.57% in 2013.

The result which is perceived as poor in many parts of the country, especially because of the large number of candidates who failed English Language and Mathematics has generated debates in educational circles across the land. Many observers of the sector insist that the result is a reflection of the state of affairs in the nation’s schools. A lot of stakeholders also share this view.

Letter of appointment

Commenting on the rot in the sector in a telephone interview she granted to Vanguard Features last week, a primary school teacher in Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State who spoke on condition of anonymity said: “I know a colleague in my school who paid the sum of N80,000 as bribe to get her letter of appointment as a teacher.”

She continued: “She is   incompetent and doesn’t even know simple addition in arithmetic. For instance, while teaching pupils in her class arithmetic, she used to start addition of figures from the left to the right, instead of from the right to the left. This means she adds hundreds before tens, and units come last instead of the other way round.”

She said it was another teacher in the same school who eventually noticed their colleague’s wrong teaching of arithmetic to pupils in her class,   that intervened and corrected her.
Another trainee teacher based in Abuja who simply identified herself as Franca   told Vanguard Features a similar story last Thursday. She said she knew a federal civil servant who secured a teaching job for another lady after receiving N300,000 as bribe.

Said she: “It was a friend of mine who is a trained teacher and attends the same church with this civil servant that told me about it. She said even though she had been seeking employment into the Federal Government’s school system and the man knew she was qualified, he refused to mention the teaching vacancy to her because he believed she wouldn’t be able to afford that kind of money”.

She continued: “Of course when such a person is eventually employed, the head of the public school he or she would be posted to may not be able to sack him even if he is incompetent”.

Secretary-General of the Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT, Comrade Ikpe Obong spoke in the same vein when he granted an interview to Vanguard Features in Abuja last Wednesday.

Commenting on the high rate of failure among public school candidates who sit for major examinations, he expressed regret that governments at various levels had abandoned the boarding school system which used to promote a reading culture among students.

According to him: “Now that the government has largely de-emphasized the boarding system, thereby compelling many students to stay in their parents houses while attending school, they don’t have time to read.

”By the time many secondary school students who attend day schools stay in their parents houses, they are more occupied with information and communication technology, ICT,   devices and television is also there to distract their attention. This is in addition to the home chores which also consume time.”

He further observed that   “students in public schools are not so well endowed. You might even see a student who did not have a single textbook of his own throughout his primary school. These are the kinds of things that play out and lead to the poor results of candidates during the West African Senior School Certificate Examination. By the time this kind of situation catches up with students, the next target of blame would be the teachers; the accusation would be that the teachers are not doing their work. “

Public schools versus private schools

He pointed out that   although Nigerians normally felt that students in private schools normally performed better than their counterpart in public schools, “this normally happens because in the private schools, more than 50 percent are boarders.”

He explained that under the boarding system, the environment is usually better for academic work and parents are not allowed to go in there to disturb the students.

”By the time a student is going to the boarding house, he goes with all the textbooks he needs. Sometimes, they can’t even carry the heavy bag of textbooks that had been bought for them” he said.

Obong identified other factors responsible for the situation in public schools to include: government’s inability to pay adequate attention to them; inability of government to properly equip laboratories, thereby denying students the practical knowledge they are supposed to have before they sit for their examinations; inability of government to take care of teachers welfare and presence of quack teachers in schools.

Efforts made to sanitize schools

Despite the knocks that governments at various levels have received over their handling of problems that have been identified as responsible for the poor performance of candidates from public schools in public examinations, several state governments have taken firm steps to sanitize their schools.
This normally   followed shock   findings by some of them.

For instance in 2008,  Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi who was the Education Commissioner in   Kwara state subjected teachers to tests in English and Mathematics.
Abdullahi who later became Minister of Sports said: “An aptitude and capacity test was organised for a total of 19,125 teachers in the Kwara State public school system. Out of these, 2,628 were university graduates. The teachers were given tests that were designed originally for primary four pupils in English and Mathematics.

”At the end of the exercise, only seven teachers out of the 19,125 crossed the minimum aptitude and capacity threshold. Only one out of the 2,628 graduate teachers passed the test, 10 graduates scored outright zero. The teachers fared worse in literacy assessments which recorded only 1.2 per cent pass rate. More worrying is that nearly 60 per cent of the teachers could not read information or use information in preparing a simple lesson.”

However, in Edo State where a total of 936 unqualified teachers were identified and later sacked, the Adams Oshiomhole administration reinstated them.
The development   was traceable to an incident which occurred in August 2013. A female primary school teacher of 18 years standing was discovered to be incapable of reading her age declaration affidavit before a panel set up to screen teachers. Oshiomhole, who visited the panel at work, was shocked and vowed to sanitise the system. He wondered how a person, who was incapable of reading, could write on the blackboard for pupils.

Given the above scenario, the   Federal Government is actually not impressed with the attitude of many state governments especially towards funding primary education in the country.

The Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC, which is the Federal Government’s intervention agency which was established for the purpose of rehabilitating primary schools across the country has accused most state governments of paying only lip service to the upgrading of primary schools.

He further stated that many state governments across the country have abandoned funds meant for the development of primary education because they don’t consider it a priority.

Speaking to Vanguard Features in Abuja last Thursday, the Public Relations Officer of the Commission Mr David Apeh said:”many state governments across the country have abandoned funds meant for the development of primary education because they don’t consider it a priority.”

FG’s commitment

He continued: “One of our duties is to make sure that the Federal Government’s contribution to the   funding of primary schools nation-wide is available so that the state governments would come forward to claim them by providing their own equal contribution. This is basically for the development of primary schools in the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory. This is because education for all is the responsibility of all; that is to say, the local, state and Federal tiers of   Government are involved. UBEC’s responsibility is to ensure that things are done properly in primary schools across the country which is the foundation for educational system.”

However, he accused some state governments of refusing to come forward to collect these funds because they have refused to provide their own   contribution.

Said he: “What has been happening is that the Federal Government has been keeping funds aside and asking the various state governments to come forward and collect them. But these state governments have not been complying probably because of lack of political will or some other reasons best known to them.”

He said a total of N47 billion was currently lying idle at the vault of the CBN because they had not been accessed by the various state governments.

He continued:   “This is why large sums of money which are supposed to have been collected by the affected state governments are still piling up at the CBN.

This is the reason why you observe that primary school pupils   sit under trees to receive lessons in some states of the federation.

” These funds are supposed to be used for the construction of more classrooms and making of school furniture so that both the pupils and teachers could be more comfortable in the school environment”.

He argued like other experts in the sector that once a child does not get a strong foundation at the primary school level, such a child would continue to be affected by that deficiency throughout his educational career.

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