-
Since the 1970s, the educational system of the Yorubaland
has been gradually deteriorating. Standards have been falling with buildings,
infrastructure poorly maintained, and teachers poorly remunerated. However, the
pace of the deterioration picked up in the 1990s because of the military
government poor policies and the corruption that had taken over governance in
the country.
Our major factor that helped the deterioration of public
education system in the region was the forceful takeover of privately owned schools
by the federal government in the 1970s. Schools that were previously maintained
by the tithes and fisebililah money of congregants suddenly found themselves at
the mercy of the inconsistent government. Of course, Nigeria was swimming,
though some would say, ‘drowning’ in petrodollar in the 70s and the early days
of the forceful takeover were rosy. The government had money to splash around
and even ordered a nationwide increase in civil servants' salary across boards.
However, things took a turn for the worse in the 1980s when the oil prices
crashed and since then the schools that were forcefully taken over and those
originally owned by the government have seen their fortune gone down.
What is the way forward for our education system?
Alternatively, are we going to fold our hands and watch it become a centre of
wasting time? How long are we going to continue churning out secondary school
graduates who can barely write their name? Now, public schools have become the
last option for the poorest of the poor. Private schools have taken over
education for the working and middle classes of our society. This will further
widen the gap between the various classes of our society. I have observed
repeatedly that so many public secondary school students cannot compete with
private school kids in a primary class. If we continue along this line, we are
setting up our society for a serious fall.
What is the way forward? I think we need to restructure our
schools, one school at a time. The government should adopt a primary school and
a secondary school per every local government every year and turn around their
infrastructure. A community management board consisting of teachers, parents
and community leaders should be constituted to manage these overhauled schools.
The board must be allowed to levy charges on community members and pupils to
maintain the facility and procure materials if necessary. The board should be
able to hire, reward and reject teachers based strictly on performance and
competence. Allow individual schools to set its test and termly examinations
while the sessional examinations will continue to be state-wide. Companies and organisation can also be
encouraged to adopt a school and take care of some of its need during a certain
period.
We need to take radical decisions to bring public school at
par with private and I hope that my article can begin a conversation on
incubating ideas to do just this.
*Contributed by Adisa Kabiru Adeniyi, could
be reached via: adisakabiru@yahoo.co.uk
ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!
