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Nigerian Education Reform --- It Takes a Village By Prof. Manny C. Aniebonam President, Nigerian IT Professionals in the Americas (NITPA), Washington DC USA.
“Our Vision is to become an emerging economy model, delivering sound education policy and management for public good. With this vision comes the expanded role for education as an investment for economic, social and political development; as a tool of empowerment for the poor and the socially marginalized groups; as an effective means of developing the full capacities and potentials of the human resources; and as a veritable means of developing sound intelligent learning societies”.
With above vision statement, the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Education under Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili, recently introduced to the nation a structured blueprint for education reform and intervention, documented in the Ministry’s white paper titled “Vision 2020: The role of the Nigerian Education Sector”. Interesting enough, the ongoing reform agenda by the ministry has attracted several reactions, criticism, and resistance from several quarters including a few past leaders under whose watch the education system degenerated to the current comatose state. Critically missing from these cross fire and punches against the reform is the element of understanding of how far the education customers – the Nigerian students – have suffered under the burden of dilapidated infrastructure, unmotivated teaching staff, retrospect academic curriculum, and total absence of technology resources at all levels of our institutions. End result is an education system far worse than what the colonial masters handed over to the nation forty six years ago; a system which needs critical intervention from grounds up.
It is therefore fitting that those of us who had the benefit of primary/secondary education in the country, prior to sojourn overseas for further studies, and later working in the Western institutions as academic staff for close to two decades, weigh into the discussions, with sound neutrality and balanced analysis of what the proposed education reform is all about. Globally, education reform is not a new thing, and has been in practice even among developing nations around the globe for many years. It serves as a tool for administrators to sit back and take a hard look at the system, with a clear understanding of what was broken, followed by a vision of achievable outcome, strategy and implementation plan.
Following examples of education reforms with a significant impact on quality, are worthy of mention.
Education reforms in Chile during the 1990s had the objectives of improving quality and reducing class inequities. Within the overall reforms, several interventions over time, had a significant impact on quality including school evaluation and rewards system, elimination of double shifts to increase the number of hours and activities in the school day, and improvements on teachers’ salaries and job conditions.
Another example of education reform is India’s District Primary Education Program (1995-1999). Botswana’s Primary Education Improvement Project, the Basic Education Teacher Diploma in Namibia, and the Rajasthan Training Program (India) involve teachers directly in the design and delivery of their ongoing training. An innovative approach in teacher training is Guinea’s 2005 reform program for teachers who want to pursue training and research activities. In Brazil, distance education using television was the focus , with expansion of education access as the overall objective.
In studying each of these examples, one would find elements of goal setting, targeting, consultation, strategizing, intervention implementation and evaluation, all of which were phased over time. Watching the method adopted by the Education Minister and her team, it is easy to see that these structured principles are being followed, as contained in FME’s Education Reform Vision 2020, stating that “Through strategic and collaborative partnerships with several key stakeholders qualitative education relevant for the 21st Century will be provided. The National Economic and Empowerment Development Strategy (NEEDS) recognises education as the vital transformational tool and a formidable instrument for socioeconomic empowerment. Its target is to increase the percentage of graduates of primary schools who acquire functional literacy and numeracy to 100 percent and adult literacy to 65 %. “ The plan further laid out a set of measurable outcome, which can easily be evaluated post implementation, as the overall objectives of the reform efforts and at all relevant level. These include: Ø At Pre –K Level : provision of quality early childhood care and education through public / private partnerships.
Ø At Primary level - delivery of quality basic education to all children aged 5-14 from well-qualified and motivated teachers in schools with good facilities and infrastructure.
Ø At Secondary level – Provide Increased access to senior secondary schools providing relevant education that develops the skills and aptitudes of individual students and meets the needs of the nation.
Ø At Tertiary level - Develop a tertiary education sector that provides access at degree and sub-degree levels to all qualified students, a sector which is responsive to the needs of individuals, states and the nation and is entrepreneurial in its activities
Ø For those left behind - Build an expanded adult and non-formal education sector providing quality basic and vocational education in response to a demonstrable need.
Ø For Special Needs Population - Develop a functional quality education for all special needs and physically challenged students without discrimination.
We can therefore can deduce from all available information that the blueprint is now there for true reform of the education sector in Nigeria, akin to the United States “No Child Left behind” education reform program initiated January 8 2002 by the Bush administration. However, where most reforms we studied, carried out by similar economies had focused on one education level (such as primary or tertiary), or targeted one structural defect (such as access or infrastructure), the Nigerian reform is holistic, all encompassing, and total in nation, and for obvious reason: everyone agrees that this patient of a system as a whole has long been in comatose, patched up with leaky bandages for so long a time, with the resident physicians busy chasing personal interests in commercial galleries, blaming everyone else but themselves, while the patient lies dying by the minute. And where does that leave our poor students – tied in the vacuum of despair and confusion, each wishing to be somewhere else, anywhere but Nigerian institution.
But at this juncture, an observer must begin to ask “now what”. What happens now, post December 14 2006 after unveiling the education reform blueprint by the Federal Ministry of Education?. What exactly is the input from stakeholders and others who had the opportunity in the past to contribute towards fixing the problems?. What about funding, and readiness of the institutions themselves to embrace the reform agenda. Above all, given that students do not grow on trees but are products of parents and guardians in the society, where do parents come into in all this?. Truth of the matter, and in looking at all empirical evidence in successful reform programs, the phrase “it takes a village” becomes an important metaphor.
Rather than attacking the minister and the program, even before the first phase of implementation is carried out, stakeholders, especially the parents, should rally around and proffer constructive input towards implementation of the reform program. What help is it for a former minister of education to publicly call his current counterpart “a bull in a china shop” with a plea that she “please have a re-think on these basic issues in education…and remember you have no guarantee that your reforms of today may not be reversed tomorrow!”. Shocking personal attack, to say the least. This, in the view of anyone familiar with Nigerian issues, totally summarizes what is wrong with us as a nation: past “leaders” can hardly stand to see someone else succeed where they had abysmally failed. Parents voice must rise to fully condemn this!
Then again, how healthy is it for a segment of the academic union to argue that alignment of some willing polytechnics (many of whom have for so long complained of marginalization and negligence) with universities of their choice, is “not right”, without spelling out what in fact is wrong with the proposal. Recent poll of over 3000 polytechnic students (current and alumni) shows that over 87% are strongly in favor of this corrective measure, knowing fully well that the market on the one hand will have more respect for their degree, and the program itself on the other hand will improve in quality over time, with the right resources and attention. Again, it will be useful for parents of these students, knowing how bad things have got, and understanding that something fundamental must be done to arrest the situation, to rise in unison and urge the ministry to march on unperturbed.
With the reform blueprint in place, however, it is not yet uhuru for Nigerian education sector. Implementation, and eventual evaluation of the outcome remain major challenges. With the support of major stakeholders including students, parents, institutional administrators, government and the private sector, there are major implementation issues that must now be considered, if not already contained in the roll out plan. These include:
i. Assurance that sufficient human resources are in place to roll out the agenda ii. Increase in funding, especially towards infrastructure and acquisition of technology tools for the classrooms and operational functions. iii. Assurance that the reform agenda reaches the main theater of operation – the states and local governments iv. Effective utilization of the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) tools developed by the Minister’s reform team, thus assuring that independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) exercise is constantly implemented. Accountability by teachers, principals, lecturers and administrators remains the bane of all we do in the education system. v. Evaluation of each teacher by the students, and for every class, semester and school year. Much as this is included in the reform recommendation, any attempt to water this down, or implement it without serious carrot-and-stick process, will amount to failure.
We would hope that less attention will now be given to whatever some people may see as the short comings of the reform blueprint; with serious focus paid to the implementation framework, with constructive input from relevant stakeholders.
And to effectively do so, it is worth reminding ourselves that education is, first and foremost, not an end in itself. It is an essential ingredient for the full realization of human capacity, within the tradition of Human Capacity Theory. In this framework, education is essential for making informed choices, for seeing beyond the immediate horizon and opportunities, and for having a voice in public decision making. Education is a counterweight to limits on social and economic mobility that are imposed by cultural biases, gender and ethnic discrimination, and history, and when that foundation of our national survival and future existence is broken as it is today, no one in leadership position should approach solving it with kid’s gloves, thus justifying the Minister’s seeming obsession with getting it right. The ongoing discussion on education reform in the country is very healthy, with the hope that post May 29 2007, a competent hand such as Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, with absolute take-no-prisoner approach will remain the champion of this education reform to assure its long term success and sustainability, given that real gains will take some time to materialize. Nonetheless, and judging from global best practices, it will take all stakeholders, a collective village, to turn things around, as failure is NOT an option!.
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