The sharp decline in standard and quality of education has continued to be a topic of national discuss since a couple of years, with academicians, educationists and stakeholders proffering different solutions to the issue which has caused and causing a great deal of embarrassment and sleepless nights to administrators of education nationwide, even with little or nothing being done practically to take a look at the very foundation. The near comatose in the education sector, especially in public school, due to lack of adequate funding and the removal of welfare of teachers from the priority lists of government at various levels resulted in the preference for privately owned schools across the nation. Parents and guardians were left with no choice than to withdraw there children and wards from the ‘ailing’ public schools into privately owned ones.
Not even the exorbitant fees charged by many of these private schools have been able to deter parents and guardians from enlisting their children and wards, as they were prepared to bear the huge costs just is ensure a ‘sound and quality’ education for their young ones. Some very-rich in the society even go as far as sending their kids to schools outside the shores of this country because of the lack of confidence in the Nigerian educational system. The rush and crave by parents to get their kids enrolled into private schools led to a complete overstretch of the few available private schools at the time. Hence, establishment of more private schools became inevitable and necessary, this led to more business owners and individuals setting up schools and colleges, whether they had or knew what it really takes to establish such schools or not.
A carefully conducted research in across the state has revealed the pathetic and unfortunate conditions that pupils are exposed to daily, all because some persons who shouldn’t have any business establishing private schools have being licenses to own and operate same, probably because some people at the state ministry of education and local government education authorities have refused to do their job or have been adequately financially induced to acquire such licenses. This became evident because there are laid down rules, criterion and conditions that prospective school owners are supposed to meet before they can be given licenses to operate. These includes: availability of play ground and recreational facilities, hygiene of the proposed school environment, adequate space and classrooms in order to prevent overcrowding of pupils and students, provision of first aid and health facilities, capacity to employ rightly qualified teachers, availability of adequate teaching aids etc.
Findings have shown that a good percentage of private schools within the lokoja metropolis and across the state are housed in rented uncompleted-buildings with surroundings that cannot be described as healthy enough even for animals. Apart from the fact that some of these schools are located much close to refuse-dumps, public toilets and market places, majority of them do not have a playground or recreational facilities. Pupils and students are left to roam the streets during leisure time and are at the risk of being knocked down by irresponsible motorists. Of the twenty seven private nursery/primary schools and colleges visited across the state, only two has a First Aid Kit which is needed to tend to the pupils in case of mechanical injuries. Transportation arrangement of many of the so called “international” schools is a public display of inhumanity and human right abuse, as kids are being crated like stocked fishes in buses that aren’t even fit enough to transport firewood.
The quality and qualification of teachers in many of the private schools calls for worry and grave concern, as majority of the teachers on the employment of most of the private schools are merely secondary school certificate holders.
Even though the minimum qualification of teachers at primary school level is holders of National Certificate of Education (NCE), most private school owners forms the habit of cutting corners, by employing NCE holders as Head teacher and assistant Head teacher, with the rest of the teaching staff being holders of SSCE/WASSCE or NECO who would accept a monthly stipend of between N5000 and N7,500 in a desperate bid to maximize profit. Many of these teachers can’t even express themselves in simple English language. A particular private nursery/primary is located next to a bear parlor; another operates from a single lock-up shop, while many have very few classrooms that either weren’t properly ventilated or had windows without covers. The funny part is that all of these schools claimed to have actually been government approved and licensed by the relevant education authorities.
If the basis and the supposed foundation of education can be so bastardised and handled with levity then the whole efforts at restoring the lost glory of education in kogi state would only amount to an exercise in futility. The universal basic education program at the state have been reduced to conduit-pipes through which resources of government is being siphoned by political and administrative officials. We keep lamenting about the abysmal performance of students in NECO and WAEC examinations, yet the very foundation has been totally neglected and allowed to rot due to corruption, indiscipline and administration recklessness.
As is currently the case, majority of private nursery/primary schools and colleges aren’t any better than the public ones, this is because some persons sits in their offices at the state ministry and departments of education and approve licenses to individuals to operate schools without making sure that some standard conditions are adequately adhered to. Under the leadership and supervision of the kogi state ministry of education, there’s need for officials of education authorities to put measures in place to continually send out inspection teams to access and evaluate the conditions and viability of private nursery/primary schools and colleges with the aim of ensuring that rules and regulations, best practices and quality is maintained, if kogi state and Nigeria’s quest to restore the glory days of education is to come to fruition.
– Hussain Obaro
oseniobaro@yahoo.com, 08065396694
