WASCE: Reversing the tradition of failure
The recently released results of the last May/June West African School Certificate Examinations(WASCE) reveal that just 38 per cent of candidates achieved credit pass in five subjects including English and Mathematics. This abysmal performance is fast becoming generic and indeed should evoke concerns from civil society and governments accordingly.
Mere concerns that would generate lamentations are not adequate. The solution lies in actions that will help reverse this awful and dangerous trend in the country’s education system. As education matters are within the purview and jurisdiction of federal and state governments, these governments should all declare a state of emergency on the education sector in the country as no nation can indeed rise above its knowledge capacity.
Experts believe that the perennial lip service to developing primary education and the near absence of an effective teacher education system in addition to a system that makes teaching a profession for unfortunate ones will remain a disservice to proper learning and guarantee mass examination failures.
Investigations reveal that a weak learning foundation from the primary education level as a result of ineffective teaching remains a lifelong limitation for the child. While reasons such as lackadaisical attitude of students to study and growing societal aversion to learning have been adduced as causal factors for this perennial dismal performance in public examinations, investigations by reveal that Nigeria’s beleaguered education sector is facing a huge burden of teacher shortage in both quantity and quality.
Going by national estimates revealed in 2012 by the National Commission of Education, the country requires up to 1.3 million teachers to bridge the gap in number of teachers required at the primary education level.
Remarkably, teacher deficit in Nigeria is not only manifested in number but also in the quality of the existing teachers, as poor working conditions of teachers in the country have made the teaching profession un-attractive to top flyers and a last resort left only for those who fail to find fortunes in other sectors.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) holds that “while the shortage of primary teachers is a concern in all regions of the world, the situation in sub-Saharan Africa is critical…One-third of countries in the region are suffering from teacher shortages” According to findings by UNESCO “Sub-Saharan Africa alone represents close to one-half the global lower secondary education shortage (46%).
Ministries of education across the country should overhaul the units charged with supervising standards and quality delivery in primary and secondary schools. With a burgeoning schools system and the rising need to ensure that school proprietors and authorities do not abandon the attainment of proper standards, effective supervision should be administered to ensure that actual learning takes place.
Those who do not possess the requisite qualifications and aptitude required for teaching should not find their way into the teaching profession. The implication of this is that the teaching profession should be made attractive so that the low supply of proper teachers would not be a reason for allowing all sorts of persons into what is supposed to be a noble profession.
Continuous education for the teacher is also essential as this will assist in updating their knowledge and empower them with relevant and effective teaching methods. Nigeria’s education system has for long neglected the teacher who is the direct agent of learning in the schools system. So long as this neglect continues, putting an end to the ongoing learning crisis and reversing the failure trend in public examinations will remain farfetched.