ABUJA – The NUT Chairman in Rivers, Mr Godfrey Nwogu, has called for a regional curriculum for secondary education in West Africa.
Nwogu said the proposed curriculum would address the poor results recorded by students in public examinations.
He said educationists in the ECOWAS sub-region should be given the responsibility to design curriculum and syllabus for secondary school education.
“If professional educationists are charged with the duty of framing what is to be taught, when it will be taught and how it will be taught, then, performance will be objectively assessed.
“Every state in Nigeria implements the National Curriculum as designed by the Federal Government, but other ECOWAS countries have their own, so how do we assess ourselves?” Nwogu asked.
He said the poor result recorded by Nigerian students in the WASSCE was most unfortunate.
‘’I believe that we can still find a solution to this problem. Stakeholders in education should urgently meet to ensure that our students do not record mass failure in WASCE,’’ he said.
Nwogu said although the Rivers Government had employed qualified manpower for primary and secondary schools, the number was not enough for the number of students.
He appealed to the government to speedily complete the on-going infrastructure development projects in secondary schools to meet the needs of the students.
He said there was too much indiscipline in public schools because teachers no longer caned students to correct them.
Nwogu said the inspectorate unit of the Ministry of Education in Rivers was functional but training for teachers was not regular.
“Our monthly, salary is regular, and there is increased funding for educational programmes in the state, so strike is not an issue,” he said.
A school proprietor from Jebba, Kwara, Alhaji Mohammed Raji, called for a review of the 1981 National Policy on Education to check mass failures in public examinations..
Raji, a former Commissioner for Education in Kwara, told NAN in Ilorin that both the WAEC and NECO examination syllabuses were obsolete.
He said the 1981 Education policy was become out-dated and inadequate to cope with the challenges of providing quality education to Nigerian pupils.
Raji advised that Nigeria education system be domesticated to meet the challenges of the day.
He blamed students’ poor performance in public examinations on parents, teachers and even the society.
According to him, a lot of attractions in the society are drawing the students away from their books.
Raji said many students spent time on the Internet and using smart phones to the detriment of their studies.
He said while there were many qualified teachers in schools, the ’ performance of students was poor because poor monitoring by parents.
Raji said private school students performed better because teacher/student ratio and dedication on the part of the teachers in private schools.
He advised that students in each class should not be more than 20 for the teachers to have proper grip on the class.
He also called for boarding facilities in schools so that students could be properly monitored by teachers.
Raji said day students were not likely to study well at home after leaving the school premises.
He said because of the vital roles private schools were playing in educational development of the country, the Federal Government should assist them financially.
“I want to say that the education sector is one area that we just have to re-appraise because the allocation given to the states is based on the number of pupils in the schools”, Raji said.
He said state governments should support private schools because they collect money on their behalf from the Federal Government.
“The money should be given to these children to go to school wherever they want to school, whether they want to go to public school or to go to private school.
“Yes, there are some in the public schools but the others are also in the private schools. Government collects the money for all the children in schools whether in public or private schools”, he said.
Prof. Wole Akinsola of Tai Solarin University of Education said in Abeokuta that the poor performance of students in examinations portended great danger for the country.
Akinsola blamed the situation on “huge infrastructural deficit” in many schools, saying the learning environment in most of schools was poor and discouraging.
