Godfrey AKON
Nigeria’s goals on basic education are currently challenged by a complex web of obstacles. Besieged by both emerging and known difficulties, the country’s prospects of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, four, which focuses on the provision of inclusive and equitable quality education, and promoting lifelong opportunity for all by 2030 could well be a mirage.
From access problems and inadequate inclusiveness to a gradual depletion of quality and poor funding, even well-crafted policies by the Federal Government are teetering on the brink of failure or have already failed as effective implementation remains to be seen, while the impact on the country’s learning population remains palpable.
Although both federal and state authorities have long identified, fashioned and operated a strategy of improving access, inclusiveness and quality to meet the country’s basic education goals, with avid concern for out-of-school children, the drive for access and quality are not yielding expected results.
A pool of data surfacing from the subsector gave spur to these conclusions. According to a 2018 National Personnel Audit, NPA, conducted by the Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC, in collaboration with international development partners, enrolment at Early Child Care Development Education, “ECCDE, level is still not optimal at seven million in both public and private ECCDEs, out of a projected population of 17 million 3 to 5-year-olds. This means that at least 10 million children who could benefit from ECCDE lack the opportunity to do so.”
Similarly, the data on primary school enrolment showed a total enrolment of over 27.9 million learners with males constituting 52 per cent and females 48 per cent. “Despite the seeming high enrolment, there are indications that primary school enrolment is not optimal yet as only 27.9 million children were on roll out of a projected population of 40.8 million 6–11-year-old children. The implication is that close to 13 million children of primary school age are not yet enrolled.”
On junior secondary schools, the data showed that 1,652,860 were enrolled in private schools while 5,189,093 were enrolled in public schools. “The picture painted by the data analysis implies that UBEC, SUBEBs and LGEAs still have a lot to do to ensure that all JS eligible learners have the opportunity to complete JS education.”
Only recently, the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said Nigeria is facing one of the worst crisis of staggering learning outcomes in the world with over 70 per cent of its school children within the age of 10 years unable to read and write.
UNICEF’s Education Specialist, Manar Ahmed, while delivering a basic education sector analysis during a virtual presentation at a Two-Day Media Dialogue on SDGs as Child Rights, organised by UNICEF in collaboration with the Child Rights Information Bureau, CRIB, of the Ministry of Information and Culture, in Kano, said the learning crisis is caused by low public spending on education, inadequate and underprepared workforce, insufficient physical resources and low school readiness.
On ways of resolving the identified challenges, the UNICEF education specialist observed that a thorough assessment of the education budget line can help to refocus resources to improve the country’s basic education learning outcomes.
Her argument is that the impact of funds invested in the sector should be weighed to properly channel future resources for desired outcomes.
Also of urgent need for review is the current 7 per cent budget allocated to the sector, which is grossly inadequate in the face of varying challenges begging for attention. Authorities must, therefore, take deliberate steps to scale up allocation to the sector in subsequent years and gradually grow it to the 26 per cent recommended by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO, in the succeeding years. It is therefore imperative for government to increase spending in the sector.
According to the 2018 National Personnel Audit, 27 per cent of teaching staff in Nigerian schools are not qualified while the country has 37 per cent shortage of classrooms at the national level. Failure to recruit qualified teachers and provide critical infrastructure for teaching and learning, will not rekindle the right kind of motivation for teachers and their commitment to the job.
Despite challenges bedeviling the sector, the need for international partners such as UNICEF to work with Nigeria to ensure the country achieves the sustainable Development Goal, SDG, four, is very urgent.
Experts believe that the country cannot get its educational goals right until it begins to prioritise implementation of child rights as education is one of the rights of a child.
UNICEF Communication Specialist, Mr. Geoffery Njoku, called on the country’s leadership to refocus on learning outcomes in schools, adding that UNICEF was also shifting its focus from out-of-school children to children already enrolled in schools to ensure that everything is done for them to have quality basic education.
it must also be noted that education is a fundamental human right well-articulated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the, CRC, which guides the work of UNICEF, and of course, in other legal instruments, including the Nigerian Constitution.
As stated by the Chief of UNICEF Field Office in Kano, Mr. Rahama Rihood Mohammed Farah, in executing its mandate of promoting, protecting, advocating, and collaborating with partners for the realisation of the rights of children, UNICEF has been collaborating with the Government of Nigeria to improve outcomes in the education sector.
“Progress is being made; yet much more needs to be done, hence this dialogue! For instance, as is the case with some countries globally, and in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria faces a learning crisis in which learning is not taking place, even for children that are in school.
“According to the World Bank, Nigeria is experiencing a learning poverty in which 70 per cent of 10-year-olds cannot understand a simple sentence or perform basic numeracy task.
“To address the challenge, achieving basic learning outcomes at the foundational level of education is key. It is clear that to improve learning outcomes in Nigeria, achieving basic foundational skills at that level of learning cannot be overemphasized,” he said.
