Will the New Year bring a new hope to the education sector?

By all intents and purposes, 2015 is the year that Nigeria, among other countries are expected to achieve the Education For All, EFA goal. However, by all observations and realities, Nigeria will not meet that goal. Saturday School Life, SSL, looks at the education sector in retrospect as well emerging trends that might change the face of the sector in 2015.


Insecurity, strikes and failures in 2014

Although the six-month old strike embarked by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU was called off nearly a year ago, its aftermath remains. Public universities across the country should have begun a new session in September, but despite collapsed timetables and make up classes, many could not meet up. As a result many varsities will start the 2014/2015 academic session in January 2015-nearly five months late.

Sad as it was for the universities in 2014, the Polytechnics and Colleges of Education had a worse review for the year. The President of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, Dr. Chibuzor Asomugha told Saturday School Life, SSL, that for the polytechnic sub-sector the year ended with “nothing to celebrate.”

He said: “There are concerns about the future of the sector as polytechnics are no longer just second place to students seeking higher education.

They have slid to third place; entrance into colleges of education is even in higher demand now. There has been low funding, low morale, high brain flight, and a lot of governance issues that haven’t been resolved.” When ASUP suspended its eleven-month old strike in July, the Federal Government promised to resolve all issues in three months. That was six months ago. The ASUP President opined that although there was some snail-paced work going on, nothing concrete was achieved.

The poor 2014 scorecard for the education sector is not limited to the tertiary sub-sector alone. The West Africa Senior School Certificate examinations witnessed nearly 70 percent of failures-the worst since 2010. Only 31.28 percent of students scored five credits and above including Mathematics and English language. In the Unified Tertiary Matriculation examinations held earlier in the year, only 47 candidates scored 250 marks and above.

Terrorism especially in the North East, set back the education sector in 2014 like no other factor. Over 800 schools and about 194,664 students have been affected by the several Boko Haram attacks in the North Eastern region of Nigeria according to the Coalition of Civil Society Groups (CCSG) independent evaluation and assessment performance project report on the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC).

Hope in 2015?

The EFA is a global movement led by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO, aimed to meet the learning needs of all children, youths and adults by 2015. Even when the EFA goal was postulated in 2000, experts doubted the ability of Nigeria to meet up with the 15 year time frame.

It came as no surprise therefore, when EFA monitoring report concluded that Nigeria will definitely not meet the EFA goals 1, 2, 4-expansion of early childhood care and education, free and compulsory primary education for all, and 50% increase in adult literacy-by 2015.

With 10.5 million out of school children-the highest number in the world-it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out the reasons for this. Nigeria is one of the only 15 countries that UNESCO projects will have fewer than 80 per cent of its primary school age children enrolled by 2015.

The newly built Almajiri schools, which should have reduced the burden a little, are not bedeviled by the ongoing trend of insecurity in the north. And when lives are not secure, poor attendance is inevitable.

However, 2015 being an election year might usher in a lot of changes. Whether such changes would be good or bad remains to be seen. If the ruling party remains in power, there might be more room to sustain already existing initiatives and structures. If a new party takes over, this might not be the case.

The new education minister, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau has been commended for bringing an end to the strikes as well as relative calm to the sector in his few months in office.

If power changes hands, will he remain? On the other hand however, a new party might develop and follow through new programmes and structures that could be the saving grace of the sector. Another issue to take into cognizance is the decision to make some cuts in the 2015 budget as a result of dwindling oil prices.

Although details of the budget are largely being kept secret, according to the Director General, Budget Office of the Federation, Dr. Bright Okogu, N492.03 bn has been allocated to education.

This is about 8.86% of the entire budget expenditure and barely one third of UNESCO’s stipulated 26%. A Nigerian adage can be loosely translated to mean that sweet soup can be traced to healthy expenditure. If this is true, then irrespective of other contributing factors, it will take a miracle for education to be sweet in 2015.

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