Hundreds of millions of children and young people remain out of school globally. Billions of those in school are not even acquiring the basic education. Girls continue to encounter discrimination in education and, as elsewhere, the most vulnerable and marginalised – low-income groups, persons with disabilities, migrants, refugees and displaced persons, among others – are being hit hardest. These are uneven and negative indices of our time, according to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF).
In this imbalance, Nigeria is ignobly confronted by high number of out-of-school children, learning crisis, low infrastructure, low budgets and incessant strikes by unions on campuses, amid dwindling revenues to implement party’s manifestoes.
Therefore, for Vice-Chancellor of Baze University, Prof. Tahir Mamman, who was on Wednesday night unveiled as the new Minister of Education, it would not be a tea party! So also for the commissioners for education coming on board in states.
In Nigeria, free education seems utopian for the citizenry, owing to paucity of funds in the face of national competing needs. In the midst of this, Mamman is taking over at the centre on Monday.
It would not be business as usual as the country is confronted with high number of out-of-school children, learning crisis, low infrastructure, low budgets and incessant strikes by unions on campuses at federal and state levels in the face of dwindling revenues.
Poor funding
To address the rot and decadence in basic education, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recently asked the Federal Government to ensure that the country allocates between 45-50 per cent of the nation’s education budget to primary and secondary education.
Chief of Education, UNICEF Nigeria, Saadhna Panday-Soobrayan, who made the call in Abuja, lamented that the poor investment in basic education in the country had tremendously affected the learning outcomes at that level of education.
Poor national education outlook
A report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, in partnership with Global Education Monitoring Report, showed that the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria had risen above 20 million from about 12.5 million recorded in 2021. The data showed that sub-Saharan Africa remained the region with the highest out-of-school children.
The introduction of the Better Education Service Delivery for All (BESDA), targeted at reducing the figures of out-of-school children in the country, seemed not to have reduced the figures.
The report stated: “Nigeria holds the unenviable position of being the country with the largest population of out-of-school children of primary school age: 9.6 million in 2020, up from 6.4 million in 2000 and 7.5 million in 2010. The number of out-of-school children continues to rise.” The statistics might have changed now.
This spark, according to educationists, calls for an urgent intervention by the government to arrest the situation so that many pupils can return to school.
High out-of-school in northern states
Despite accessing all their funds for basic education from the Universal Basic Education Commission, most northern states continue to boast of high figures when it comes to issues of out-of-school in Nigeria. According to the 2021 Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey 6 (MICS 6), the highest out-of-school rates are found in Kebbi (65 per cent), Zamfara (61 per cent) and Bauchi (61 per cent). The lowest rates are found in Ekiti (two per cent) and Imo (one per cent).
UNICEF’s Chief of Measurement for Results (M4R), Claes Johanson, at a two-day media dialogue on MICS 6 results, in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, noted that the share of children that are out of school in primary schools was still 25 per cent. The MICS 6 was carried out in 2021 by the National Bureau of Statistics as part of the global MICS programme. It covered 39,632 households.
The poverty link
In Kebbi State, the Programme Assistant on Education, Youthhub Africa, Peter Ogah, linked the rising figures in the state to increase in poverty.
Ogah said: “A key contribution to this for me is the increase in poverty rate (parents preferring to survive than send their wards to school), very low quality of teaching, and a gradual decline in interest for education. Kebbi, for instance, is not plagued with insecurity as the other states, but yet has an alarming figure.
“I had a conversation with a parent and traditional rulers while in Kebbi and he said he would rather send his wards to neighbouring states where the academic standard is high than have them study in Kebbi State.
“Based on UBEC’s guidelines, huge chunks of the fund accessed are used for renovation and construction with just a fraction going into teachers’ training and retraining, robust curriculum development and other factors that truly drive the quality of education in a state.”
Alarming numbers of unqualified teachers
The roles of teachers in shaping the future of tomorrow’s leaders are important, and that is why Teachers Professional Development programmes are vital to the teaching profession. It helps to enhance the capacities of teachers to deliver quality teaching to pupils.
According to the National Personnel Audit of the Universal Basic Education Commission 2018, the quality of teachers is in short supply across all educational levels and incoming minister and commissioners of education must tackle this fast.
According to UBEC, 27 per cent of the teaching staff in the country is unqualified. The commission noted that in the North East, there are 33 per cent unqualified teachers and in the North West, there are 39 per cent unqualified teachers.
The lack of quality teachers has further fuelled the learning crisis in the country. According to the World Bank, about 70 per cent of pupils in the age bracket of 10 are not learning.
The bank noted that globally, 125 million children are not acquiring functional literacy or numeracy, even after spending at least four years in school.
Tertiary education unions’ crisis
Last year was dominated by the strike by the four university-based unions – the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU); the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU); the Non-Academic Staff Union of Allied and Education Institutions (NASU) and the National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT).
On February 14, ASUU’s leadership declared a four-week warning strike, which was subsequently extended. The union was soon followed by the other three university-based unions. But after a series of meeting with the Federal Government team, the three other university-based unions – NAAT, SSANU and NASU called off their strike.
For ASUU, what started as a warning strike soon snowballed into an indefinite one, crippling academic activities in the nation’s public universities.
ASUU on one side insisted that the Federal Government must meet its agreements on funding for the revitalisation of public universities, payment of earned academic allowances, reconstitution of the FGN/ASUU 2009 Renegotiation Committee, University Transparency Accountability Solution, UTAS, and withheld salaries and non-remittance of check-off due.
The Federal Government on the other side insisted that most of the demands had been met and only refused to pay the union their salary for not working for six months; a decision that led to further extension of the strike by the union. The university lecturers insisted on full implementation of their demands.
There were a series of meetings between the government team and the leadership of ASUU. At some point, negotiations between the leadership of ASUU broke down.
But after a series of meetings with the ASUU leadership, the Buhari administration found out that reaching an agreement with ASUU was not going to come easy. It invoked the Trade Dispute Act and referred the matter to the National Industrial Court.
The industrial action was an offshoot of the alleged failure of the Federal Government to fully implement the 2020 Memorandum of Action after the union called off its strike in December of the same year.
The union had protested the decision of President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration to migrate all public service workers to IPPIS. After a few years on the platform, ASUU began to develop resistance to IPPIS. It cited irregularities in the payment platform for the resistance.
The union proposed UTAS as an alternative platform for the payment of salaries for its members following discrepancies it highlighted in the use of IPPIS.
The Federal polytechnics and colleges of education also have various axes to grind with the federal and state governments. For the new minister and commissioners for education, it would not be a tea party!