A wake-up call over mass failure in WAEC examinations

High failure rate in the WAEC-administered SSCE highlights the need for all hands to be on deck to rescue Nigeria’s sick secondary education system, writes IKENNA OBI & KELECHI EWUZIE

With only 31.2 percent (i.e., 529,425,000 out of 1,692,435,000) of candidates who participated in the 2014 May/June Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations (SSCE) administered by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) recording credit pass in five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, as against 36.57 percent in 2013 and 38.81 percent in 2012, it is clear that performance is dropping steadily.

The below 50 percent performance in the last seven years is also an indication that the Nigerian secondary education system is terribly sick and requires urgent and full-scale diagnosis, deserving physicians.

The WAEC exam is the major certifying exam for students who have undergone secondary education in Nigeria, while the National Examinations Council (NECO) exam is the second. Performance in both exams has since been dismal.

Stakeholders share the blame 

Concerned stakeholders who spoke to BusinessDay believe strongly that this high failure rate points to the poor quality of secondary education and the lackadaisical conduct of education authorities, teachers, parents and students, and consequently the total abandonment of the education sector.

“The WAEC result that recorded 30 percent pass in Mathematics and English is woeful, to say the least. The blame for this mass failure should be placed on all stakeholders because we have not paid sufficient attention to education at all levels,” says Oyewusi Ibidapo Obe, professor and vice chancellor, Federal University Ndufu-Alike Ikwo, Ebonyi State.

“The students on their part are not serious, the teachers are lackadaisical and there is no sufficient control in terms of inspectorate division,” he adds.

More worrisome is the fact that this decline in student performance has become a trend and education authorities are treating such it with levity, which points to the quality of leadership in the country.

“If this mass failure was recorded in a country like South Africa or any other serious looking country, heads will roll, but nothing of such has ever happened in Nigeria,” Obe says.

Nigeria vs South Africa

While Nigeria has been basking in the euphoria of having the largest economy in Africa with a GDP of $510 billion ahead of South Africa, which has a GDP of $384.3 billion, Nigeria’s dysfunctional educational system remains an albatross that may deny it of sustainable economic growth. Pass rates in South Africa’s National Secondary Certificate exam, which is the equivalent of WAEC exam in Nigeria, have been quite high in the range of 70 percent and above.

Neglect of secondary education

There has been so much focus on tertiary education in Nigeria to the detriment of secondary education. In some states, teachers in secondary and primary schools are the last to receive their salaries while their welfare and training needs are never given priority.

In the 2013/2014 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Irina Bokova, UNESCO director-general, states that an education system is only as good as its teachers, and unlocking their potential is essential to enhancing the quality of learning.

“Evidence shows that education quality improves when teachers are supported – it deteriorates if they are not, contributing to the shocking levels of youth illiteracy,” Bokova states in the report.

Nigeria is one country where teachers receive little or no support. It is no wonder why, irrespective of the poor learning environment in many secondary schools, especially the public ones, there is so much activity but little or no learning going on.

Need for constant teacher training

Olaniyi Ojo, principal, Westerfield College, says part of the solution is to constantly train and retrain teachers so that their competence level will always be high and impact positively on student performance.

“There is a saying that he who must continue to teach must continue to learn. That is why teachers must continue to be trained and retrained,” Ojo says.

He also believes that rather than empower students to learn, the ongoing mobile telecom gadget revolution is “influencing the students negatively by making them very lazy” as students now spend a sizeable amount of their time on these gadgets to the detriment of their studies.

The role of family

It is usually said that the family is a crucial social institution that helps greatly in the socialisation of persons, providing proper direction and guidance for children. But the Nigerian family institution is in crisis, arising from a misconception of parental roles and the pursuit of crass materialism against the proper upbringing of the youths. 

“It is quite unfortunate that a lot of parents have abdicated their responsibilities to their children academically, all in the pursuit of material wealth,” laments Martins Odunade, a concerned parent and educationist.

Need for proper monitoring  

The failure of inspectorate units in the education ministries is a major hindrance to the acquisition and maintenance of education standards at all levels of education. Many Nigerians in their 40s upwards still fondly remember the activities of education inspectors and how their periodic scheduled and un-scheduled visits pushed teachers and principals in secondary schools to sit up and ensure proper implementation of teaching activities.

But today, as Ojo points out, the education ministries hardly pay attention to inspectorate division. This is counterproductive and a reflection of the decay and poor governance standards in the education sector.

Conclusion 

With inefficient education ministries, schools with de-motivated and frustrated teaching faculty, students are largely left to drift until they drift away from the system into tertiary education or the larger society with poor literacy skills.

The youth bulge is huge in Nigeria. The crucial challenge facing Nigeria is how to ensure that her huge and growing youth population acquires the proper skills that would enhance its productivity and the overall productivity of the economy. If this does not happen, and fast, there are fears that Nigeria risks losing its opportunity to grow into a frontline economy by the second half of the 21st century.