FRIDAY DISCOURSE WITH DR. ALIYU TILDEMore Private Schools, PleaseLast
week the Kano State House of Assembly resolved to reduce the number of
private schools in the state and direct all government officials to
withdraw their children from such schools and enrol them henceforth only
in public schools. This is an idea that has been touted in the North by
many people who feel deeply concerned about the “death” of education
in the region. Their thesis is that reforming the education sector has
been made impossible because government officials who are responsible
for embarking on the reforms have found an escape route through the
backdoor provided by the presence of private schools. They educate their
children there and leave those of the masses to continue suffering in
neglect. At
the debut of the idea two years ago, I wrote an article using the above
title in my former column criticizing the idea, showing that, contrary
to the popular sentiment, the nation needs more private schools, of
course with their standards set and strictly supervised by statutory
authorities. In view of the resolution passed by the assembly in Kano as
well as the growing criticisms on the presence of private schools, I am
reproducing an abridged version of that article here to convince both
the citizenry and policy makers nationwide that private schools are
assets, not liability. The
essential question here is how strong is the evidential link, as the
logicians would call it, between the proliferation of private schools
and the patronage they receive from public servants on the one hand and
the failure of government to reform public schools on the other? The
link is weak if we consider the factors that led to the collapse of
public schools in the country. One is proliferation of public schools
and their overpopulation that started with the introduction of Universal
Primary Education. The capacity of the system became overstretched,
first, in terms of personnel when the program was launched, then in
terms of funding when the fortunes of the country started to decline.
The second is the squandermania and thievery that flourished under the
laissez-faire administrations that started in the mid-eighties and which
destroyed every sector of governance in the country. Therefore
the major stumbling block to education reform today is mismanagement.
There is too much emphasis on rehabilitation of structures at the
expense of provision of teaching materials and development of learning
skills. There is also neglect of students and teachers’ welfare, lack
of adequate inspection, and so on. These reasons, which we have
discussed in detail in previous articles on education, are responsible
for the falling standard of education, not the existence of private
schools. On
the simple correlation between proliferation of private schools and the
falling standard of public schools, the fact is that falling standard of
public schools was what caused the proliferation of private schools.
Even today, if governments were to restore standard of education in
public schools, many private schools will become bereft of customers.
This is why public schools like Kano State Science Schools and Bauchi
State Special Schools have become hotcakes where public servants and the
masses scramble to outwit one another in enrolling their children. The next question is what moral wrong or legal breach is
committed by civil servants who enrol their children in private schools?
It is necessary in the first place to divorce any generalization that
holds all civil servants as responsible for fallen (not falling,
anymore) standard of education. The fact remains that not all public
officers, not even all those in ministries of education, can be blamed.
They are not to blame for the inaptitude of a leadership that deprived
the sector of funds and facilities. What would the officers do before
power-drunk administrators that had the least interest of their subjects
at heart? What will an officer do when no fund is allocated to him, or
whenever it was allocated it was accompanied by senseless directives? Is
being a public servant then enough ground to stop a messenger, for
example, or any innocent public officer who did not partake in this
mischief, from sending his child to a private school? If we cannot deny
the children of such civil servants access to private schools, how then
do we justify denying private individuals the right and freedom to
educate their children in such schools? In law, the right of government
over public servants stops at their official duties. What they do about
the welfare of their families is completely out of the domain of any its
claim and encroaching into it is infringing of their fundamental human
rights. Let
me give this parable by way of summary. Do we need to close private
clinics and hospitals or ban public servants and their children from
enjoying their services before we can revive the standard of our public
hospitals? The child deserves good education regardless of its source,
just as he deserves to be treated wherever his cure is anticipated
whenever he is sick. Now,
having easily established the rights of citizens to educate their
children anywhere, we are tempted to lay the claim that for the North to
have a stable and sustained development in education, it needs to
encourage the establishment of private schools. There are many reasons
for this proposition. Perhaps
the strongest reason is the fact that education is a basic pre-requisite
of life today. This makes it necessary for parents to take personal
interest and responsibility in educating their children. Leaving
education entirely in the hands of government will be catastrophic,
given the sum of all the uncertainty, inconsistencies and inefficiency. Our
ancestors realised this and for it education remained private for most
part of human history until recently. Even in Europe, it was the growth
of capitalism and industry that caused the debut of what experts call formal
education through which culture, literacy and technical knowledge is
transmitted. The reason why government became involved in establishing
schools in Europe was because it was realised that to sustain an economy
of an industrialized nation, productive skills of all citizens must be
improved through access to formal education where such skills are
harmonized and harnessed. In America, where the right of education is
not enshrined in the constitution because the constitution preceded the
advent of formal education, public funding of education was adopted as a
state policy only in the early 19th century and was given a
boost in the 1930s in an effort to ‘anglicise’ immigrants whose
preponderance was perceived as threatening to the “American
Character,” in the account of C. L. Chochran and E. F. Malone. Here
at home, private funding of education is in line with our past. Islamic
education, as important as it is, has always been private. People
started schools at will, and parents were free to enrol their children
in schools of their choice, sometimes in distant places. Children were
sacrificed to education even at early age, the root of the almuhajir
tradition that has unfortunately transformed into a social quagmire
today. The
second reason is that private schools are an alternative to
public schools. There might be times when lapses would overtake public
schools and their standard fall drastically. Parents have every right to
seek for excellence, the best they could find for their children,
anytime, anywhere. Public schools, because of their size and
bureaucracy, have been reported to be lowest in standard, almost
worldwide. The aim is skill acquisition and scholarship that will be
used for the common good of the society. If you go to a hospital, do you
ask whether the physician is a graduate of private or public school? The
third reason is that as our population increases and we become more
enlightened, enrolment increases without any improved efficiency in
governance. Public schools eventually become increasingly weaker. The
establishment of private schools then becomes necessary not only as
options for parents or alternatives in pursuit of excellence as
mentioned earlier, but also as a safety valve for easing the pressure
build-up. If a parent would agree to sponsor the education of his child,
that is commendable as it proves goes a long way to prove his commitment
to education in addition to lessening the burden on government; if
thousands would do the same, that will bring a lot of relief to
government. The resources of government would then be concentrated on
educating the less privileged in the society. Here, private schools are
a positive contribution that complements the effort of
government. I
will be happy to see private schools proliferate in the North as they
have done in the South. In just some few years to come, it will be
evident that graduates of private schools will be the only ones that
will come to the aid of the region, as it is common knowledge that the
harvest of public primary and secondary schools has been close to zero
for almost a decade now. The South is affected to a lesser extent
because its private schools have the capacity to provide almost all its
manpower needs. That is the way. The North must in the same way realise
that dependence on government has proved disastrous. It must not
continue to carry that mistake any further. A
fourth dimension is the suggestion that I also gave long ago that
column: government can go into a partnership with private
entrepreneurs on education. For example, it can rehabilitate some
institutions and lease them out to whoever is ready to effectively use
them in return for, say, educating a minimum number of indigenes of the
state freely. Many other areas of partnership could be explored. In
conclusion, private schools need not be scapegoats to explain the
failure of public ones. There is no way public schools can operate
efficiently amidst the ongoing laziness and mismanagement in government.
As we have seen in article, private schools are today needed to serve as
options for parents in a free society; as alternatives to
which parents will resort whenever public schools fail; as complementing
bodies that reduce the enormous pressure that is progressively
building up in public schools as a result of population growth and other
factors; as partners with government in reducing its education
load; and finally as competitors in pursuit of excellence
together with public schools. While
government tries to improve the standard of its schools through future
judicious use of resources and efficient management, there is the need
not only to encourage the existing private schools, but also to allow
them proliferate in the interest of the nation. The best service that
government will render to its citizens here is to ensure that whether a
school is private or public, it has to maintain the minimum standard set
by the authorities. Otherwise, the society will be better of without it. I
rest my case. |