New Education Policy: Another Fiasco Loading?

By Bola BOLAWOLE
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Let me waste no time in saying that if care is not taken, the new policy on education as enunciated by the Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, will translate into another “subsidy is gone” fiasco! Good policy but hastily pronounced before thinking it through and without adequate preparations made for its seamless implementation cannot but end up a malady! The resultant effects may be that an already distraught and gasping-for-breath education system will be thrown into complete chaos. That, I am sure, is not the government’s intention.

The federal government may have good intentions but without proper spadework and implementable datelines, we may inadvertently spread confusion and chaos all over the place. The road to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions. If the government presses forward with the new policy as announced, it will be hellish for millions of Nigerian households, majority of which will be in the southern part of the country. Again, that cannot be the government’s intention; neither can it be its purpose.

How can you decree that as from next year 2025, students who are not yet 18 years old cannot enrol for and write WAEC and NECO examinations? The questions you must answer are: What becomes of students who are below that age but who are already in classes that qualify them to enrol for and write those examinations? Will they be demoted to lower classes? Will they drop out of school and go stay at home until they attain the stipulated age? What will they be doing at home in the interim?

It is said that an idle hand is the devil’s workshop. Have you put into consideration the considerable investment of parents on such children? Have you considered the psychological impact of this policy on the students as well as their parents? Are you mindful of the fact that society itself will not be spared the deleterious effects of this abrupt summersault in education policy? Pros and cons are usually considered before policies are enunciated. There is something called the intended and unintended effects: Have we sufficiently considered these?

The policy of “No WAEC and NECO exams if you are not 18 years old” erroneously assumes that everyone writing those examinations wants to – or will ever seek – admission to institutions of higher learning. Many of my classmates who wrote WAEC with me in 1974 did not proceed further. I am sure this is the case in millions of other cases. Some went to seminaries and Arabic colleges; some into the world of business; some went to technical trade centres, teacher training colleges, etc. Many of those writing WAEC or NECO here may be going abroad to further their studies. So, why prevent them?

Since writing the examinations does not automatically qualify anyone for admission, let them write while they are still fresh and on fire and wait for them at the entry point into the universities or what-have-you! Asking them not to write the examinations makes no sense at all. Does it occur to our policy makers that some students write WAEC and NECO multiple times before making their paper combinations? So, let them write!

Rather than climb its tree from the leaves, the government should address this matter from the grassroots; that is, from the pre-primary and primary school level. There is no need for a rush. In those days, your right hand must pass over your head and touch your left ear before you could start primary school in the defunct Western Region where I come from. That was the standard practice of determining that you are six years old or thereabout. I was rejected on my first attempt and Grandma had to drag me home kicking, wailing, and yelling! I scaled through the next year!

But modernization and rural-urban migration has changed a lot of things. Virtually everyone is now in the towns and cities. Virtually everyone is working class or must leave home early to eke out a living. There are fewer old relatives to leave one’s children with these days. Because of these changes, and also because they, too, were involved, government officials abandoned the policy of six years as the minimum school enrolment age.

Once the government abdicated its responsibility, private entrepreneurs swooped on the education sector. We began to have creches, nurseries and private primary schools. It became the vogue and status symbol to enrol one’s child in private nursery schools; joining the Joneses, you may call it! Soon, this new fad grew and they began to establish secondary schools and universities. As at the last count, there were about 149 private universities in the country as listed on the National Universities Commission website, as against 62 federal and 63 state universities. And the list keeps growing. As at 2019, available figures stated that there were about 10,000 public secondary schools while private schools were close to double that figure.

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Nature abhors a vacuum. When the government failed to move with the times, the private sector moved in to provide essential services needed by the people. Where there is demand, supply will show face. Because my wife and I were working-class, we took our first daughter to the creche at 15 months. Her first report card, which I still keep, read “Cannot talk! Cannot read! Cannot write!” It stands to reason that such children will complete secondary school before age 18.

The three tiers of government – Federal, State and Local – must find ways to keep the children gainfully engaged at pre-primary school level, as is the case in other climes. The responsibility should not be heaped on parents alone. If you do, parents will find the easy way out. There will be criminality and cutting corners. False declaration of age will become the order of the day. When you make laws that are not easy to obey, you are inadvertently encouraging illegality to take over. To accommodate students who may graduate from secondary school before age 18, let us also bring back the two-year Higher School Certificate. I attended one at Ilesa Grammar School.

At the July 18, 2024 Policy Meeting of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in Abuja where the education minister broached the idea of enforcement of the 18-year policy beginning with the current admission session, he was greeted with a resounding “No” by the vice-chancellors, rectors and provosts of the institutions of higher learning present. I was there. It took some time to restore order. It was afterwards that the JAMB Registrar and other dignitaries on the high table suggested, and the Minister accepted, that the policy take effect from 2025.

Even at that, 2025 is still not feasible to run the policy seamlessly. Let us start first by enforcing the six-year school enrolment age from the primary school level. And this must be complemented with the provision of the necessary enabling environment for our children that will keep them meaningfully busy like their counterparts in China, Japan and other places that we see on social media. If you copy a system; copy it well. If you do what others do; go the whole hog.

Have you noticed that the government now appears to be deliberately underfunding education at the tertiary level? They are tactically abdicating responsibility for private universities to take over! And those ones are pricing university education beyond the reach and capacity of the average Nigerian. Our leaders own children go to school abroad – and they are not ashamed or afraid to flaunt it in our faces! Where their children school here, it is in private schools – from the grassroots to the universities.

So, our federal and state universities, polytechnics and colleges of education – even secondary schools – are run down. Visit the universities and cry! Each time I visit my own alma mater – Great Ife – I weep! With the deluge of private schools all over the place, the government may have made the silent decision to abdicate responsibility to private entrepreneurs. The appropriate name for it is commercialisation of education. Most of the private schools are owned by members of the ruling class. No poor man can run an elite private school.

Some argue that it is because they are “under-aged” that our graduates these days know virtually nothing. I beg to disagree! Yes, standards have fallen but this is not restricted to students. It is prevalent also among teachers. It is also the same thing in other stratas and sectors of our national life; not least of all in the leadership cadre. Corruption and the love of money are the cankerworms that have eaten deep into the fabrics of our society.

Other major reasons include the government’s reluctance to make commensurate investment into education; the proliferation of universities; run down facilities and decrepit infrastructure in our institutions of higher learning; private universities sapping the public universities of their vitality and strength; poor incentives means that good hands cannot be attracted or retained while those already in the net get disillusioned day-by-day, leading to declining and diminishing productivity and commitment; among others.

Students graduate and there are no jobs. Prospective employers also set age requirements that encourage the same under-age menace the government is trying to address. The education our children get only hands them certificates (which many of them cannot defend) but does not adequately prepare them to be productive. The conditions of living in the universities dehumanise rather than endow the students with confidence. They suffer unimaginable deprivations – no water, no power supply, no decent accommodation, no good meals, no hope of a better tomorrow, etc. We will be unfair and uncharitable to demand more than we get now from them and their teachers!

*Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/ Editor-in-chief of The WESTERNER newsmagazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday TRIBUNE and TREASURES column in the NEW TELEGRAPH newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.